4. "DIRGE"
("Dirgelike, mournfully")
5. "VILLAGE FESTIVAL"
("Swift and light")
Although there is no reason to believe that MacDowell has here based his music upon such a detailed dramatic plan as underlies, for example, his symphonic poem "Lancelot and Elaine" (see pages 191-194), it is evident that he was inspired by moods and pictures the nature of which is sufficiently indicated by the titles of the different movements. It may be interesting to note that there is authority for the statement that the principal theme of the first movement ("Legend") was taken from a harvest-song of the Iroquois Indians in New York State; that for his second movement ("Love-Song") the composer used a love-song of the Iowas; that the dominant theme of "In War Time" is one to which the Indians of the Atlantic coast attributed a supernatural origin and character; that a Kiowa theme (a woman's song of mourning for her lost son) dominates the "Dirge"; and that the chief melodic ideas of the last movement are a war-song and a woman's dance of the Iroquois.
In this music, it has been said, MacDowell "has caught and transfixed the essential character of his subject: these are the sorrows and laments and rejoicings, not of our own day and people, but of the vanished life of an elemental and dying race: here is the solitude of dark forests, of vast and windswept prairies, and the sombreness and wildness of one knows not what grim tragedies and romances and festivities enacted in the shadow of a fading past."
[MacDowell's three remaining works for orchestra—the symphonic poem "Hamlet; Ophelia" (Op. 22),[105] the "Suite" (No. 1: Op. 42), and its supplement, "In October"—have no programmes whatsoever. The suite is in four movements, titled as follows: (1) "In a Haunted Forest" (In einem verwünschten Walde); (2) "Summer Idyll" (Sommer-Idylle); (3) "The Shepherdess' Song" (Gesang der Hirten); (4) "Forest Spirits" (Waldgeister). "In October," the supplement, is in one movement. This episode formed part of the original suite, but was not published until several years after (the first four parts were published in 1891; the supplement in 1893). Both are included under the same opus number.]
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