His pupil and friend, Mr. W.H. Humiston, recalls that, in going over MacDowell's sketchbooks and manuscripts after his death, he found that many of the manuscripts had been rewritten several times: "I would find a movement begun and continued for half a page, then it would be broken off suddenly, and a remark like this written at the end:—'Hand organ to the rescue!'"
I told him once that I had first heard his "To a Wild Rose" played by a high-school girl, on a high-school piano, at a high-school graduation festivity. "Well," he remarked, with his sudden illumination, "I suppose she pulled it up by the roots!" Some one sent him at about this time, relates Mr. Humiston, a programme of an organ recital which contained this same "Wild Rose" piece. "He was not pleased with the idea, having in mind the expressionless organ of a dozen years ago when only a small portion of most organs was enclosed in a swell-box. Doubtless thinking also of a style of organ performance which plays Schumann's Träumerei on the great organ diapasons, he said it made him think of a hippopotamus wearing a clover leaf in his mouth."
A member of one of his classes at Columbia, finding some unoccupied space on the page of his book after finishing his exercise, filled up the space with rests, at the end of which he placed a double bar. When his book was returned the page was covered with corrections—all except these bars of rests, which were enclosed in a red line and marked: "This is the only correct passage in the exercise."
He once observed in a lecture that "Bach differed in almost everything from Handel, except that he was born the same year and was killed by the same doctor."
He was often sarcastic; but his was a sarcasm without sting or rancour. Bitterness, indeed, was one of the few normal attributes which he did not possess. Mr. Humiston tells of lunching with him unexpectedly at a restaurant one day, just after his resignation from Columbia had been accepted. "We sat over our coffee and cigars until nearly four o'clock, and among other things he talked of that [the Columbia matter]. There was not a word of bitterness or reproach toward anyone, but rather a deep feeling of disappointment that his plans and ideals for the training and welfare of young artists should have been so completely defeated."
In his methods of work he was, like most composers of first-rate quality, at the mercy of his inspiration. He never composed at the piano, in the ordinary meaning of the phrase. That is to say, he never sat down to the piano with the idea that he wanted to compose a song or a piano piece. But sometime, when he might be improvising, as he was fond of doing when alone, a theme, an idea, might come to him, and almost before he knew it he had sketched something in a rudimentary form. He had a fancy that the technique of composition suffered as much as that of the piano if it was allowed to go for weeks and months without exercise. The constant work and excitement that his winters in Boston and New York involved, made it necessary for him to let days and weeks slip by with no creative work accomplished. Yet he always tried to write each day a few bars of music. Often in this way he evolved a theme for which he afterward found a use. In looking over a sketch-book in the summer he would run across something he liked, and the idea would expand into a matured work.
His sketch-books are full of all kinds of random and fugitive material—half-finished fugues, canons, piano pieces, songs, single themes. Undoubtedly this habit of work had its value when he came to the leisurely months of summer; for he did not then have to go through a period of technical "warming up." There were many days when he did not write a note, but he always intended to, and usually did. When he was absorbed in a particular composition he kept at it, almost night and day, save for the hours he always tried to spend in the open air, and two hours in the evening when, no matter how late it might be, he sat quietly with his wife, reading or talking, smoking, and, in earlier days, enjoying a glass of beer and some food. His love of reading was a godsend to him when the waters were more than usually troubled and his brain was in a whirl.
In the actual work of composition he was elaborately meticulous—not often to the extent of changing an original plan, but in minor details; he never ceased working on a score until the music was out of his hands, or entirely put aside. Sometimes he tried over a few measures on the piano as many as fifty times, changing the value or significance of a note; as a result, his piano writing is almost always "pianistic." In one respect he was sometimes careless: in the noting of the expression marks. By the time he arrived at that duty he was usually tired out. For this reason, much in his printed music is marked differently from the way he actually played it in concert. He never, in performance, changed a note, save in a few of the earlier pieces; but in details of expression he often departed widely from the printed directions.
He was always profoundly absorbed when at work, though not to the extent of being able to compose amid noise or disturbance. He needed to isolate himself as much as possible; although, when it could not be avoided, he contrived to work effectively under obstructive conditions; the Largo of the "Sonata Tragica," for example, was written in Boston when he was harassed by drudgery and care. During the earlier days at Peterboro he composed in a music room which was joined to the main body of the house by a covered passage; in this way he could hear nothing of the household workings, and was unaware of the chance caller. No one was ever allowed to intrude upon him, save his wife. Yet certain outside noises were still apparent; so the log cabin in the woods was built. There he used to go nearly every morning, coming home when he felt disposed, and usually going to the golf grounds for a game before dinner, which he always had at night. He kept a piano in the music room as well as at the log cabin; so if he felt like working in the evening he could do so; and when he was especially engrossed he often worked into the small hours. His unselfishness made it easy for his wife, when she deemed a change and rest essential, to make the excuse that she needed it. After a preliminary protest he would usually give in, and they would leave Peterboro for a few days' excursion.
He knew discouragement in an extreme form. Many weeks, even months, had to pass before his discontent over the last child of his imagination would become normal. Particularly was this so with the larger works; though each one was started in a fever of inspiration, a longing to reduce to actual form the impossible. He was always disheartened when a work was finished, but he was too sane in his judgment not to have moments when he could estimate fairly the quality of what he had written. But those were rare moments; as a rule, it was in his future music that he was always going to do his "really good work," and he longed ardently for leisure and freedom from care, so that, as he once bitterly said, he would not have to press into a small piano piece material enough to make a movement of a symphony.