Concerning Form in music, he observed: "If by the word 'form' our purists meant the most poignant expression of poetic thought in music, if they meant by this term the art of arranging musical sounds so that they constituted the most telling presentation of a musical idea, I should have nothing to say. But as it is, the word in almost its invariable use by theorists stands for what are called 'stoutly-built periods,' 'subsidiary themes' and the like, a happy combination of which in certain prescribed keys is supposed to constitute good form. Such a principle, inherited from the necessities and fashions of the dance, and changing from time to time, is surely not worthy of the strange worship it has received. In their eagerness to press this great revolutionist [Beethoven] into their own ranks in the fight of narrow theory against expansion and progress, the most amusing mistakes are constantly occurring. For example, the first movement of this sonata [the so-called "Moonlight">[—which, as we know, is a poem of profound sorrow and the most poignant resignation alternating with despair—has, by some strange torturing, been cited as being in strict sonata-form by one theorist (Harding: Novello's primer), is dubbed a free fantasy by another (Matthews), and is described as being in song-form by another: all of which is somewhat weakened by the dictum of still another theorist that the music is absolutely formless! A form of so doubtful an identity can surely lay small claim to any serious intellectual value.... In our modern days we too often, Procrustes-like, make our ideas to fit the forms. We put our guest, the poetic thought, that comes to us like a homing bird from out of the mystery of the blue sky—we put this confiding stranger straightway into that iron bed: the 'sonata-form'—or perhaps even the 'third-rondo form,' for we have quite an assortment; and should the idea survive, and grow, and become too large for the bed, and if we have grown to love it too much to cut off its feet and thus make it fit (as did that old robber of Attica), why then we run the risk of having some wiseacre say, as is said of Chopin: 'Yes—but he is weak in sonata-form'! ... Form should be nothing more than a synonym for coherence. No idea, whether great or small, can find utterance without form; but that form will be inherent in the idea, and there will be as many forms as there are adequately expressed ideas in the world."
Concerning programme-music he wrote at length. "In my opinion," he says in one of his lectures, "the battle over what music can express and what it cannot express has been carried on wrong lines. We are always referred back to language as actually expressing an idea, when, as a matter of fact, language expresses nothing but that which its vital parallel means of expression, gesture and facial expression, permit it to express. Words mean nothing whatsoever in themselves; the same words in different languages mean wholly different things; for written words are mere symbols, and no more express things or ideas than any marks on paper would. Yet language is forever striving to emulate music by actually expressing something, besides merely symbolising it, and thus we have in poetry the coining of onomatopoetic words—words that will bring the things they stand for more vividly before our eyes and minds. Now music may express all that words can express and much more, for it is the natural means of expression for all animals, mankind included. If musical sounds were accepted as symbols for things we would have another speech. It seems strange to say that by means of music one could say the most commonplace thing, as, for instance: 'I am going to take a walk'; yet this is precisely what the Chinese have been doing for centuries. For such things, however, our word-symbols do perfectly well, and such a symbolising of musical sounds must detract, I think, from the high mission of music: which, as I conceive, is neither to be an agent for expressing material things; nor to utter pretty sounds to amuse the ear; nor a sensuous excitant to fire the blood, or a sedative to lull the senses: it is a language, but a language of the intangible, a kind of soul-language. It appeals directly to the Seelenzustände it springs from, for it is the natural expression of it, rather than, like words, a translation of it into set stereotyped symbols which may or may not be accepted for what they were intended to denote by the writer"—a credo which sums up in fairly complete form his theory of music-making, whatever validity it may have as a philosophical generalisation.
In regard to the sadly vexed question of musical nationalism, especially in its relation to America, his position was definite and positive. His views on this subject may well be quoted somewhat in detail, since they have not always been justly represented or fully understood. In the following excerpt, from a lecture on "Folk-Music," he pays his respects to Dvorák's "New World" symphony, and touches upon his own attitude toward the case as exemplified in his "Indian" suite:
"A man is generally something different from the clothes he wears or the business he is occupied with; but when we do see a man identified with his clothes we think but little of him. And so it is with music. So-called Russian, Bohemian, or any other purely national music has no place in art, for its characteristics may be duplicated by anyone who takes the fancy to do so. On the other hand, the vital element of music—personality—stands alone. We have seen the Viennese Strauss family adopting the cross rhythms of the Spanish—or, to be more accurate, the Moorish or Arab—school of art. Moszkowski the Pole writes Spanish dances. Cowen in England writes a Scandinavian Symphony. Grieg the Norwegian writes Arabian music; and, to cap the climax, we have here in America been offered a pattern for an 'American' national musical costume by the Bohemian Dvorak—though what the Negro melodies have to do with Americanism in art still remains a mystery. Music that can be made by 'recipe' is not music, but 'tailoring.' To be sure, this tailoring may serve to cover a beautiful thought; but—why cover it? and, worst of all, why cover it (if covered it must be: if the trademark of nationality is indispensable, which I deny)—why cover it with the badge of whilom slavery rather than with the stern but at least manly and free rudeness of the North American Indian? If what is called local tone colour is necessary to music (which it most emphatically is not), why not adopt some of the Hindoo Ragas and modes—each one of which (and the modes alone number over seventy-two) will give an individual tonal character to the music written according to its rules? But the means of 'creating' a national music to which I have alluded are childish. No: before a people can find a musical writer to echo its genius it must first possess men who truly represent it—that is to say, men who, being part of the people, love the country for itself: men who put into their music what the nation has put into its life; and in the case of America it needs above all, both on the part of the public and on the part of the writer, absolute freedom from the restraint that an almost unlimited deference to European thought and prejudice has imposed upon us. Masquerading in the so-called nationalism of Negro clothes cut in Bohemia will not help us. What we must arrive at is the youthful optimistic vitality and the undaunted tenacity of spirit that characterizes the American man. This is what I hope to see echoed in American music."
Of MacDowell as a pianist, Mr. Henry T. Finck, who had known him in this capacity almost from the beginning of his career in America, has written for me his impressions, and I shall quote them, rather than any of my own; since I had comparatively few opportunities to hear him display, at his best, the full measure of his ability:
"As he never felt quite sure," writes Mr. Finck, "that what he was composing was worth while, so, in the matter of playing in public, he was so self-distrustful that when he came on the stage and sat down on the piano stool he hung his head and looked a good deal like a school-boy detected in the act of doing something he ought not to do.
"Often though I was with him—sometimes a week at a time in Peterboro—I never could persuade him to play for me. I once asked Paderewski to play for me his new set of songs, and he promptly did so. But MacDowell always was 'out of practice,' or had some other excuse, generally a witticism or bit of sarcasm at his own expense. I am sorry now that I did not urge him with more persistence, for he might have yielded in the end, and I would have got a more intime idea of his playing; for after all a musical tête-à-tête like that is preferable to any public hearing. I never heard Grieg play at a concert, but I am sure that the hour I sat near him in his Bergen home, while he played and his wife sang, gave me a better appreciation of his skill as an interpreter than I could have got in a public hall with an audience to distract his attention. One afternoon I called on Saint-Saëns at his hotel after one of his concerts in New York. Talking about it, he sat down at the piano, ran over his Valse Canariote, and said: 'That's the way I ought to have played it!'
"MacDowell was quite right in saying that he was out of practice; he generally was, his duties as professor allowing him little time for technical exercising; but once every few years he set to work and got his fingers into a condition which enabled them to follow his intentions; and those intentions, it is needless to say, were always honourable! He never played any of those show pieces which help along a pianist, but confined himself to the best he could find.
"Usually the first half of a recital was devoted to the classical and romantic masters, the second to his own compositions. Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Grieg, were likely to be represented, and he also did missionary work for Templeton Strong and other Americans. His interpretation of the music of other composers was both objective and subjective; there was no distortion or exaggeration, yet one could not mistake the fact that it was MacDowell who was playing it.
"The expression, 'he played like a composer,' is often used to hint that the technic was not that of a virtuoso. In this sense MacDowell did not play like a composer; his technical skill was equal to everything he played, though never obtrusive. In another sense he did play 'like a composer,' especially when interpreting his own pieces; that is, he played with an insight, a subtlety of expression, which only a creative performer has at his command. I doubt if Chopin himself could have rendered one of his pieces with more ravishing delicacy than MacDowell showed in playing his 'To a Wild Rose.' I doubt if Liszt could have shown a more overwhelming dramatic power than MacDowell did in playing his 'Keltic' sonata. In this combination of feminine tenderness with masculine strength he was, as in his creative gift, a man of genius. After one of his concerts I wrote in the glow of enthusiasm that I would rather hear him than any pianist in the field excepting Paderewski; that utterance I never saw reason to modify."