It looks out over the whispering tree-tops
And faces the setting sun.
And in this “house” he told many of his dreams in lovely melody! While ill, he often expressed the desire to share the inspiration-giving peace and beauty of his woods with friends, workers in music and the sister arts. Out of this wish has grown the colony for creative workers, which has been a haven to hundreds of composers, poets, painters, sculptors, dramatists, and novelists. The “Log Cabin” is the seed out of which twenty studios have sprung. The small deserted farm has spread over 500 acres, and Mrs. MacDowell with the aid of faithful friends has made a dream come true!
MacDowell was a composer for the pianoforte, although he wrote some lovely songs; a few orchestral works, best known of which is The Indian Suite, in which he employs Indian themes; and several male choruses written when he conducted the New York Mendelssohn Glee Club. We love and remember him for his Woodland Sketches, Sea Pieces, Fireside Tales, New England Idyls (opus 62 and his last work), virtuoso-studies, and the four sonatas—the Tragica, Eroica, Norse and Keltic.
W. H. Humiston (1869–1924), composer, lecturer, musical critic, organist, assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and a pupil of MacDowell, had the most complete collection of Bach and Wagner in this country and was a great authority on their writings. This collection now belongs to the MacDowell Association, and is in the colony library at Peterboro.
Henry Holden Huss
Henry Holden Huss (1862), born in Newark, New Jersey, has lived in New York since his early twenties when he returned from studying with Rheinberger in Munich. Before his European days he was a pupil of his father, George J. Huss, a Bavarian who came to America during the 1848 revolution, and was one of the best musical educators in this country. Huss also studied with O. B. Boise (1845–1912), an American theorist and teacher. As concert pianist, Huss has played his piano concerto, one of the best American works, with all the important orchestras. Raoul Pugno, the much-loved French pianist, and Adele aus der Ohe also played it abroad and in America.
Huss has always aimed for the highest ideals as teacher, composer and pianist. A classicist at heart, his works are written on classic models,—a beautiful violin sonata with poetic slow movement, many chamber music works, a concerto for violin and orchestra, besides The Seven Ages of Man for baritone and orchestra, often sung by the late David Bispham, Cleopatra’s Death, for soprano and orchestra, a female chorus Ave Maria, and many fine art songs and piano pieces, the most beautiful of which is a tone poem To the Night, a lovely impressionistic composition that ranks with the best that America has produced.
Two other pupils of O. B. Boise, Ernest Hutcheson (1871) an Australian, and Howard Brockway (1870), a Brooklynite, have done much to make music grow in America. Hutcheson, who studied also with Max Vogrich in Australia and Reinecke in Leipsic, has made so enviable a career as pianist and teacher, that one forgets he has a symphony, a double piano concerto and several other large works in manuscript. Brockway, who harmonized Lonesome Tunes, folk songs from the Kentucky Mountains collected by Miss Loraine Wyman, is also the composer of a symphony played in Boston (1907) by the Symphony Orchestra, a suite, ballad-scherzo for orchestra, many piano works and songs. Hutcheson, Brockway and Boise were teachers in the Baltimore Peabody Institute, one of the important music schools, under direction of Harold Randolph, a fine musician and pianist.
George F. Boyle (1886) of New South Wales has, since 1910, been professor at the Peabody Institute. He has composed many piano pieces, songs and orchestral works.