Edward MacDowell: A Great American Tone Poet, His Life and Music

by John Fielder Porte

EDWARD MACDOWELL

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

EDWARD ALEXANDER MACDOWELL was born in New York City, U.S.A., on December 18th, 1861, of American parents descended from a Quaker family of Scotch-Irish extraction who emigrated to America about the middle of the 18th Century. He was their third son. As a boy he studied the pianoforte with Juan Buitrago, a South American, Pablo Desvernine, a Cuban, and for a short time with the famous Venezuelan pianist, Teresa Carreño. He also indulged in childish composition on his own account. He was not a "wonderful" pupil and did not like the drudgery of practising "exercises."

When he was fourteen years of age he went to France, accompanied by his mother, to study pianoforte playing and the theory of music at the Paris Conservatoire under Marmontel and Savard respectively. Here one of his fellow students was Debussy, even then looked upon as having curious and unconventional ideas on his art.

MacDowell had also to learn the French language, and the person who taught him French discovered that the young American had a decided gift for drawing. He showed one of the boy's sketches to a teacher at the School of Fine Arts, who offered to take the boy as a pupil for three years free of charge, and to be responsible for his maintenance during that time.

With his striking imaginative powers and love of Nature, and his appreciation of Historical and Legendary lore, it is very probable that MacDowell might have become distinguished as a painter had he applied himself to painting, for he was a born artist and very fond of sketching, but he refused the offer on the advice of his music teachers, and continued his studies at the Conservatoire.

After persevering for a couple of years he grew dissatisfied with the tuition he was receiving, and upon hearing Nicholas Rubinstein play, he determined to go elsewhere.

Careful discussion with his mother resulted in their selection of Stuttgart, Germany, whither they accordingly removed, MacDowell entering the Conservatorium there. Here he was soon convinced, however, that the instruction given there was of no use to him, and after having studied under Lebert and Louis Ehlert and having been refused a hearing by Hans von Büllow, he left Stuttgart and entered the Frankfort Conservatorium, where his teachers were Raff, the Principal, for composition, and Carl Heymann for pianoforte playing. Raff was kind and encouraging to the young American, and once said to him, "Your music will be played when mine is forgotten." The influence of Raff's teaching is evident in a number of MacDowell's early compositions, especially the Forest Idyls, Op. 19, and the First Suite for Orchestra, Op. 42.

In 1881 Heyman resigned and nominated MacDowell as his successor, a proposal seconded by Raff. The gifted American, however, possessed the criminal fault, in the eyes of jealous and intolerant old men, of being young; the fact that he was quite capable of filling the vacant post was, to them, a secondary consideration, and he was rejected.

He now began to take private pupils, and among them was an American girl, Marian Nevins, who was to become his wife about three years afterwards; the Forest Idyls, Op. 19, are dedicated to her. Although he had failed to obtain the vacant professorship at Stuttgart, MacDowell was appointed head teacher of the pianoforte at the Conservatorium in the neighbouring town of Darmstadt. His work here was soul-killing in its drudgery and he soon relinquished it.

Apart from his teaching labours, MacDowell had, in the meantime, been composing steadily, and had also been appearing at local orchestral concerts as solo pianist, and in 1882 Raff sent him to Liszt armed with his First Pianoforte Concerto, Op. 15. The mighty old Hungarian praised the work highly and also seemed impressed with MacDowell's playing. He was kind to the struggling young American, eventually accepted the dedication of the concerto, and recommended the performance and publication of some of MacDowell's earlier compositions, notably the First Modern Suite, Op. 10, and the Second Modern Suite, Op. 14.

Composition now became more and more the dominating feature in the development of MacDowell's musical genius, although he was still obliged to teach for his living.

He was fortunate in being able to persuade local conductors to try over his orchestral works, a thing that was practically impossible in his own country, as he afterwards found. In June, 1884, he returned to the United States, and in the following month (July 21st) he married his former pianoforte pupil, Marian Nevins, in whom he was to find complete happiness and a devoted companion and sympathiser. In the same year Mr. and Mrs. MacDowell returned to Frankfort, after having visited England.

In 1885 MacDowell applied for a professorship at the English
Royal Academy of Music, but Lady Macfarren, wife of the
Principal, was instrumental in securing his rejection on account
of his youth, nationality and friendship with Liszt, who, in
English Victorian academic eyes, was too "modern."

In 1887 MacDowell and his wife, they having returned to Germany,
bought a little cottage in the woods some distance from
Wiesbaden. They were very friendly with Templeton Strong, another
American composer, some of whose works have been played at the
Queen's Hall Promenade Concerts in London.

In September, 1888, the MacDowells sold their German cottage and returned to their native country, electing to make their home in Boston, Mass.

MacDowell found that his European reputation and his music had preceded him to America, and he was well received on the occasion of his first concert in his native country. Most notable were his successes when he played his Second Pianoforte Concerto, in D minor (Op. 23), at important orchestral concerts in New York and Boston.

In 1889 MacDowell played his D minor concerto in Paris, where more than twelve years before he had been a student, and it was after his return from this visit to France that his fame as a pianist and composer began to spread freely in America. In 1890 his Second Symphonic Poem, Lancelot and Elaine (Op. 25), was played under Nikisch at Boston.

The year 1891 was a successful one for MacDowell, for it saw two performances of a large orchestral work, First Suite, in A minor, he had just completed; the production of his symphonic Fragments (Op. 30); and his first pianoforte recital in America.

MacDowell's prestige continued to grow steadily. He was invariably received with enthusiasm on the numerous occasions of his public appearances as a pianist, while each new composition he issued was remarkably well received by the public and the newspaper musical critics. The Boston Symphony Orchestra was especially encouraging to him, placing both his "Indian" Suite, Op. 48, and his First Concerto, in A minor, Op. 15, on the programme of one of its New York concerts. Teresa Carreño, the famous pianist from whom he had had a few lessons when a boy, played some of his music at most of her recitals. She was also instrumental, with the ready help of Sir (then Mr.) Henry J. Wood, in making MacDowell's D minor concerto known in England. The popular London Queen's Hall conductor was impressed with the work, and has ever since recommended it to budding young pianists as a concerto worth studying.

The occasion of MacDowell's performance of his D minor concerto with the Philharmonic Society of New York on December 14th, 1894, is worthy of note. He then achieved one of the most conspicuous triumphs of his career. His playing was described by Henry T. Finck, the distinguished American musical critic, as being of "that splendid kind of virtuosity which makes one forget the technique." MacDowell received a tremendous ovation such as was accorded only to a popular prima donna at the opera, or to a famous virtuoso of international reputation. The musical critics generally agreed that the fine feeling and the power of the concerto was as responsible for his remarkable success before the critical Philharmonic audience as his playing of it. The conductor was Anton Seidl.

A few months after the above event, MacDowell created a deep impression in the same city by his playing of his Sonata Tragica, Op. 45, and some smaller pieces.

In 1896 he bought some land near Peterboro, in the south of the state of New Hampshire. In addition to a music room connected by a passage with the house, he built a log cabin in the woods near by, where he could compose in the solitude that was needed for the transcribing of his dreams and inspirations into permanent music form.

In the same year (1896) it was decided to found a department of music at Columbia University, New York, and MacDowell, described by the committee formed to appoint a Professor of Music as "the greatest musical genius America has produced," was offered the distinguished, but as it proved, laborious task of organising the new department. After some hesitation he accepted the post, as it would afford him an income free from the precariousness of private teaching.

In a letter to the writer, Mrs. MacDowell says: "In taking the position of Professor of Music at Columbia University, Mr. MacDowell went into an environment quite different from anything he had ever experienced before. He had no University training, no knowledge of its methods, and brought to his work an enthusiasm and freshness which eventually meant overcrowded class rooms."

During his vacation from the University in 1902-3, he undertook a
great concert tour of the United States, going as far west as San
Francisco. In 1903 he visited England, and on May 14th played his
D minor pianoforte concerto at a concert of the Royal Philharmonic
Society in Queen's Hall, London.

In 1904 he resigned from Columbia because of a disagreement with the faculty concerning the proper position of music and the fine arts in the curriculum. His plans for a freer and greater relationship between University teaching and liberal public culture were considered impracticable and the authorities rejected them. MacDowell's attitude in the matter was criticised, misunderstood and misrepresented at the time. He was even accused of neglecting the duties of the position he held, whereas, as it afterwards transpired, he had laboured ungrudgingly at his task. It is pleasant to know that his students were among the first to uphold his character. His patience, his droll criticisms, and the illuminating quality of his teaching endeared him to all who studied under him.

MacDowell was bitterly disappointed and hurt at the unfavourable reception of his reforming plans, but until the beginning of his fatal illness shortly afterwards, he continued his teaching privately, even giving free lessons to deserving students in whose talent he had faith.

His lectures at Columbia University are preserved in permanent form under the title of Critical and Historical Essays. In a letter to the writer, Mrs. MacDowell says of the volume, "I think my husband would have felt that just such a title implies a more finished product than one finds, but after his death the demand was very great among his old students that these notes might be preserved in permanent form … Mr. MacDowell had an extraordinary memory, and seldom had more than mere notes in delivering his lectures. Occasionally in preparing the lectures, without quite realising it, he dictated far more than he had intended, not always using this material in his class room. These Essays represent the result of what he dictated to me as he walked up and down his music room trying to crystallize his ideas; they were printed unedited. I sometimes think one reads in between the lines of these Essays a good deal of what the man was himself."

Although the time at his command was restricted, the eight years of MacDowell's Columbia professorship saw the composition of most of his finest works. For two years he was conductor of the Mendelssohn Glee Club, one of the oldest and best Male-voice choruses in the United States, and was also, for a short time, President of the Manuscript Society, an association of American composers. Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Music.

In the spring of 1905, MacDowell began to suffer from nervous exhaustion. Overwork and morbid worry over disagreeable experiences, especially in connection with his resignation from Columbia, brought on insomnia. A quiet summer on his Peterboro property brought no improvement in his condition, and the eminent medical specialists who attended him soon pronounced his case to be a hopeless one of cerebral collapse. He should have rested earlier from both his crowded teaching and his composing.

Slowly, but with terrible sureness, his brainpower was beginning to crumble away and his mind became as that of a little child. Day after day he would sit near a window, turning over the pages of one of his beloved books of fairy-tales, an infinitely moving and tragic figure.

Time went by and the delicately poised intellect grew more and more dimmed, until at last he hardly recognised his dearest friends. A few months before the end his physical strength, hitherto well preserved, began to fail, until at last he sank rapidly, dying at 9 o'clock in the evening of January 23rd, 1908, at the age of forty-six, in the Westminster Hotel, New York, in the presence of his devoted wife.

A simple service was later held at St. George's Episcopal Church, and he was buried on the Sunday following his death. His grave is on an open hilltop of his Peterboro property that he loved, and is marked by a granite boulder on which is a simple bronze tablet bearing the lines inscribed at the head of one of his last pieces, From a Log Cabin (Op. 62, No. 9), an unconscious prophesy of his own tragic end:—

A house of dreams untold, It looks out over the whispering tree-tops And faces the setting sun.

The last music that MacDowell published appeared in 1902, and indicated the beginning of a new and deeper note in his creative voice. He felt, too, that he was growing away from pianoforte work and had he lived there would have been further and more representative symphonic poems and at least one symphony from his pen, three movements of the latter being among his unfinished manuscripts. He had hoped for ultimate leisure in which to compose, free from the drudgery of earning his living by teaching, and his last great concert tour was undertaken with the idea of gathering money for the realisation of his dream.

The death of MacDowell completed the blow which his failing brain-power had dealt to American music and his many sympathisers, between two and three years before. His spirit lives, however, in his music and in the wonderful MacDowell Colony at Peterboro, New Hampshire. The latter is an amazing realisation of the composer's dream of an ideal environment for creative work in Music, Art and Literature. A chapter describing the Colony will be found further on in this book. In addition to the central organisation, now known as The Edward MacDowell Association, Incorporated, there are springing up in many American cities offshoots known as MacDowell Clubs, which contribute towards the expenses of the Colony.