IV
Since we are dealing with the phenomena of genius, I will tell about the one authentic man of genius I met at Columbia. Edward MacDowell was the head of the department of music, and he was struggling valiantly to create a vital music center in America; he was against heavy odds of philistinism, embodied in the banker trustees of the great university. MacDowell gave two courses in general musical culture. These I took in successive years, and they were not among the courses I dropped. The composer was a man of wide culture and full of a salty humor, a delightful teacher. There were fewer than a dozen students taking the course—such was the amount of interest in genius at Columbia.
Early in the course I noted that MacDowell suffered in his efforts to say in words something that could only be said in music, and I suggested to him that instead of trying to describe musical ideas, he should play them for us. This suggestion he at once accepted, and thereafter the course consisted in a piano rendition of the great music of the world, with incidental running comments. MacDowell was a first-rate concert pianist, and truly noble were the sounds that rumbled from that large piano in the small classroom.
Since I was going in for the genius business myself, I was interested in every smallest detail of this great man’s behavior and appearance. Here was one who shared my secret of ecstasy; and this set him apart from all the other teachers, the dull plodding ones who dealt with the bones and dust of inspirations. Almost thirty years afterward I wrote about him in an article published in the American Mercury (January 1928), and so vivid were my recollections I was able to quote what I felt certain were the exact words of MacDowell’s comments on this and that item of music and literature. Shortly afterward I met the composer’s widow, who told me that she recognized many of the phrases, and that all of them sounded authentic to her.
Here was a man who had the true fire and glory, yet at the same time was perfectly controlled; it was only now and then, when some bit of philistinism roused his anger, that I saw the sparks fly. He found it possible to display a gracious courtesy; in fact, he might have been that little boy in my nursery poem, “who would not even sneeze unless he asked you if he might.” I remember that he apologized to the young ladies of the class for telling a story that involved the mention of a monkey; this surprised me, for I thought my very proper mother had warned me against all possible social improprieties. Some of his pupils had sent the composer flowers on his birthday and put in a card with the inscription from Das Rheingold: “O, singe fort, so suess und fein”; a very charming thing to say to a musician. MacDowell’s story was that on opening the box he had started to read the inscription as French instead of as German, and had found himself hailed: “O, powerful monkey!”