Two of the poems were played in orchestral garb for the first time in England at a London Queen's Hall Promenade Concert on October 3rd, 1916. They were No. 6, Poeme érotique, and No. 2, Scotch Poem.
OPUS 32. FOUR LITTLE POEMS, FOR PIANOFORTE.
Composed, Wiesbaden, about 1888. Revised by the Composer, 1906. Copyrighted 1894 and 1906 (Breitkopf & Härtel).
1. The Eagle.
2. The Brook.
3. Moonshine.
4. Winter.
These pieces are, in their revised version, more individual and more worth playing than any of the preceding small pianoforte works by MacDowell. They have his true ring and stamp, although even here not in its most highly-developed form, and they exemplify his already unerring power to create atmospheres of far-reaching significance, even in tiny spaces, for all four poems are but two-page pieces, and the most striking, The Eagle, is but twenty-six bars in length.
1. The Eagle is a tone picture of Tennyson's lines:—
_He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.