Clown makes a jolly number, but beneath its outward dummy-like comicalness there runs a strain of human feeling that towards the end comes uppermost, the music becoming quite subdued, growing fainter and fainter until nothing is left but a few little final jerks.
Witch has a grotesque and mechanical jauntiness. There are some powerful and sinister passages in it, the final gesture, with its sudden tonic minor chord, capping the realism of the piece.
In the revised version of Marionettes the character drawing is more skilful, and we incidentally notice the illuminating and characteristic English used in the works of MacDowell's mature period instead of the conventional Italian musical terms. The little comedy-drama is opened by a Prologue, in which jovial, wistful and sardonic motives variously indicate the types of characters in the play, and is rounded off by an Epilogue, which is one of the most beautiful of MacDowell's smaller pieces, being full of tender feeling, and indicating unmistakably the deeper and human significance of the composer's Marionette studies. The whole album comprises one of MacDowell's most interesting portrayals of everyday human nature, standing quite alone in its droll half-amusing, half-pathetic mode of expression. It is something quite apart from the more specialised romantic and heroic figures of the three symphonic poems, Hamlet and Ophelia, Op. 22, Lancelot and Elaine, Op. 25, and Lamia, Op. 29; the three last pianoforte sonatas, Eroica, Op. 50, Norse, Op. 57, and Keltic, Op. 59; or of the noble "Indian" Suite, Op. 48.
OPUS 39. TWELVE ETUDES FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF TECHNIQUE AND STYLE, FOR PIANOFORTE.
Composed, about 1889-90. First Published, 1890 (Arthur P. Schmidt).
BOOK I:
1. Hunting Song.
2. Alla Tarantella.
3. Romance.
4. Arabeske.