PERSONAL TRAITS AND VIEWS
In his personal intercourse with the world, MacDowell, like so many
sensitive and gifted men, had the misfortune to give very often a
wholly false account of himself. In reality a man of singularly
lovable personality, and to his intimates a winning and delightful
companion, he lacked utterly the social gift, that capacity for ready
and tactful address which, even for men of gifts, is not without its
uses. It was a deficiency (if a deficiency it is) which undoubtedly
cost him much in a material sense. Had he possessed this serviceable
and lubricant quality it would often have helpfully smoothed his path.
For those who could penetrate behind the embarrassed and painful
reticence that was for him both an impediment and an unconscious
shield, he gave lavishly of the gifts of temperament and spirit which
were his; even that lack of ready address, of social adaptability and
adjustment, which it is possible to deplore in him, was, for those who
knew him and valued him, a not uncertain element of charm: for it was
akin to the shyness, the absence of assertiveness, the entirely
genuine modesty, which were of his dominant traits. Yet in his contact
with the outer world this incurable shyness sometimes, as I have said,
led him into giving a grotesquely untrue impression of himself: he was
at times _gauche_, blunt, awkwardly infelicitous in speech or silence,
when he would have wished, as he knew perfectly how, to be
considerate, gentle, sympathetic, responsive. On the other hand, his
shyness and reticence were seemingly contradicted by a downright
bluntness, a deliberate frankness in matters of opinion in which his
convictions were involved; for his views were most positively held and
his convictions were often passionate in intensity, and he declared
them, upon occasion, with an utter absence of diplomacy, compromise,
or equivocation; with a superb but sometimes calamitous disregard of
his own interests.
[Illustration: MACDOWELL IN 1892]
Confident and positive to a fault in his adherence to and expression
of his principles, he was as morbidly dubious concerning his own
performances as he was uneasy under praise. He was tortured by doubts
of the value of each new work that he completed, after the flush and
ardour generated in its actual expression had passed; and he listened
to open praise of it in evident discomfort. I have a memory of him on
a certain occasion in a private house following a recital at which he
had played, almost for the first time, his then newly finished
"Keltic" Sonata. Standing in the center of a crowded room, surrounded
by enthusiastically effusive strangers who were voluble--and not
overpenetrating--in their expressions of appreciation, he presented a
picture of unhappiness, of mingled helplessness and discomfort, which
was almost pathetic in its genuineness of woe. I was standing near
him, and during a momentary lull in the amiable siege of which he was
the distressed object, he whispered tragically to me: "Can't we get
out of this?--Do you know the way to the back door?" I said I did, and
led him through an inconspicuous doorway into a comparatively deserted
corridor behind the staircase. I procured for him, through the
strategic employment of a passing servant, something to eat, and we
staid in concealment there until the function had come to an end, and
his wife had begun to search for him. He was quite happy, consuming
his salad and beer behind the stairs and telling me in detail his
conception of certain of the figures of Celtic mythology which he had
had in mind while composing his sonata.
To visitors at his house in Peterboro, he said one morning, on leaving
them, "I am going to the cabin to write some of my rotten melodies!"
He was sincerely distrustful concerning the worth of any composition
which he had finished; especially so, of course, concerning his more
youthful performances. He once sent a frantic telegram to Teresa
Carreño, upon learning from an announcement that she was to play his
early Concert Étude (op. 36) for the first time: "Don't put that
dreadful thing on your programme"; and for certain of his more popular
and hackneyed pieces, as the "Hexentanz" and the much-mauled and
over-sentimental song, "Thy Beaming Eyes," he had a detestation that
was amusing in its virulence. He regretted at times that his earlier
orchestral works--"Hamlet and Ophelia" and "Lancelot and Elaine"--had
been published; and he was invariably tormented by questionings and
misgivings after he had committed even his ripest work to his
publisher. Only the assurances of his wise and devoted wife at times
prevented him from recalling a completed work. Yet he was always
touched, delighted, and genuinely cheered by what he felt to be
sincere and thoughtful praise. To a writer who had published an
admiring article concerning some of his later music he wrote:
"MY DEAR MR.----:
"Your article was forwarded to me after all. I wish to thank you
for the warm-hearted and sympathetic enthusiasm which prompted
your writing it. While my outgivings have always been sincere, I
feel only too often their inadequacy to express my ideals; thus
what you speak of as accomplishment I fear is often but attempt.
Certainly your sympathy for my aims is most welcome and precious
to me, and I thank you again most heartily."
Those who knew the man only through his music have thought of him as
wholly a dreamer and a recluse, a poet brooding in detachment, and
unfriendly to the pedestrian and homely things of the world. Nothing
could be further from the truth. He was overflowingly human, notably
full-blooded. On his "farm" (as he called it) at Peterboro he lived,
when he was not composing, a robust and vigorous outdoor life. He was
an ardent sportsman, and he spent much of his time in the woods and
fields, fishing, riding, walking, hunting. He had a special relish for
gardening and for photography, and he liked to undertake laborious
jobs in carpentry, at which he was quite deft. That his feeling for
the things of the natural world was acutely sensitive and coloured by
imagination and emotion is abundantly evidenced in his music. He was
fond of taking long, leisurely drives and rides through the rich and
varied hill country about Peterboro, and many of the impressions that
were then garnered and stored have found issue in some of his most
intimate and affecting music--as in the "Woodland Sketches" and "New
England Idyls." He had an odd, naive tenderness for growing things and
for the creatures of the woods: it distressed him to have his wife
water some of the flowers in the garden without watering them all; and
though an excellent shot, he never brought down game without a
pang--it used to be said at Peterboro that for this reason he only
"pretended to hunt," despite his expertness as a marksman.
In his intellectual interests and equipment he presented a striking
contrast to the brainlessness of the average musician. His tastes were
singularly varied and catholic. An omnivorous reader of poetry, an
inquisitive delver in the byways of mediæval literature, an authority
in mythological detail, he was at the same time keenly interested in
contemporary affairs. He read, and discussed with eagerness and
acumen, scientific, economic, and historical deliverances; and he
enjoyed books of travel, biographies, dramatic literature. Mark Twain
he adored, and delighted to quote, and almost to the end of his life
he read with inexhaustible pleasure Joel Chandler Harris's "Uncle
Remus." In the later years of his activity he fell captive to the new
and unaccustomed music of Fiona Macleod's exquisite prose and verse;
he wanted to dedicate his "New England Idyls" to the author of
"Pharais" and "From the Hills of Dream," and wrote for her permission;
but the identity of the mysterious author was then jealously guarded,
and his letter must have gone astray; for it was never answered.
His erudition was extraordinary. He exemplified in a marked degree the
truth that the typical modern music-maker touches hands with the whole
body of culture and the humanities in a sense which would have been
simply incredible to Mozart or Schubert. He was, intellectually, one
of the most fully and brilliantly equipped composers in the history of
musical art. He had read widely and curiously in many literatures, and
the knowledge which he had acquired he applied to the elucidation of
aesthetic and philosophical problems touching the theory and practice
of music. He had meditated deeply concerning the art of which he was
always a tireless student--had come to conclusions concerning its
actual and assumed records, its tendencies, its potentialities. He was
a vigorous and original critic, and he had shrewd, cogent, and
clear-cut reasons for the particular views at which he had arrived;
whether one could always agree with them or not, they invariably
commanded respect. Yet his erudition was seldom displayed. One came
upon it unexpectedly in conversation with him, through the accident of
some reference or the discussion of some disputed point of fact.
In his appearance MacDowell suggested a fusion of Scandinavian and
American types. His eyes, of a light and brilliant blue, were perhaps
his most salient feature. They betrayed his inextinguishable humour.
When he was amused--and he was seldom, in conversation, grave for
long--they lit up with an extraordinary animation; he had an
unconscious trick of blinking them rapidly once or twice, with the
effect of a fugitive twinkle, which was oddly infectious. His laugh,
too, was communicative; he did not often laugh aloud; his enjoyment
found vent in a low, rich chuckle, which, with the lighting up of his
eyes, was wholly and immediately irresistible. The large head, the
strong, rather boyish face, with its singular mobility and often
sweetness of expression, the bright, vital eyes, set wide apart, the
abundant (though not long), dark hair tinged with grey, the white
skin, the sensitive mouth, rather large and full-lipped, the strong
jaws, the sturdy and athletic build,--he was somewhat above medium
height, with broad shoulders, powerful arms, and large, muscular,
finely shaped hands,--his general air of physical soundness and
vigour: all these combined to form an outer personality that was
strongly attractive. His movements were quick and decisive. To
strangers, even when he felt at ease, his manner was diffident, yet of
an indescribable, almost childlike, simplicity and charm. His voice in
speaking was low-pitched and subdued, like his laugh; in conversation,
when he was entirely himself, he could be brilliantly effective and
witty, and his mirth-loving propensities were irrepressible.
His sense of humour, which was of true Celtic richness, was fluent and
inexhaustible. To an admirer who had affirmed in print that certain
imaginative felicities in some of the verse which he wrote for his
songs recalled at moments the phrasing of Whitman and Shakespeare, he
wrote:
"I will confide in you that if, in the next world, I should happen
upon the wraiths of Shakespeare, Whitman, and Co., I would light
out without delay. Good heavens! I blush at the thought of it! A
header through a cloud would be the only thing.--Seriously, I was
deeply touched by your praise and wish I were more worthy."
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.
His preferences in the matter of his own music were not very definite.
In 1903, when he had finished all that he was to write, he expressed a
preference for the "Dirge" from the "Indian" suite above anything that
he had composed. "Of all my music," he confessed at this time, "the
'Dirge' in the 'Indian' suite pleases me most. It affects me deeply
and did when I was writing it. In it an Indian woman laments the death
of her son; but to me, as I wrote it, it seemed to express a
world-sorrow rather than a particularised grief." His estimate of the
value of the music has, naturally, no extraordinary importance; but my
conviction is that, in this instance, his judgment was correct. As to
the sonatas, he cared most for the "Keltic"; after that, for the
"Eroica," as a whole; though I doubt whether there was anything in the
two that he cared for quite as he did for the Largo in the "Tragica"
and certain parts of the "Norse." He felt concerning the "Keltic" that
there was hardly a bar in it that he wanted changed, that he had
scarcely ever written any thing so rounded, so complete, in which the
joining was so invisible. He played it _con amore_, and it grew to be
part of himself as no other of his works ever did. Technically, it was
never hard for him, whereas he found the "Eroica" exhausting,
physically and mentally.
Of the smaller works he preferred the "Sea Pieces," as a whole, above
all the others; yet there were single things in each of the other sets
for which he cared perhaps as much. Of the "Sea Pieces" those he liked
best were: "To the Sea," "From the Depths," "In Mid-Ocean"; of the
"Fireside Tales": the "Haunted House," "Salamander," "'Brer Rabbit";
and he had a tender feeling for "In a German Forest," which always
seemed to bring back the Frankfort days to his memory. Of the "New
England Idyls," his favorites were: "In Deep Woods," "Mid-Winter,"
"From a Log Cabin."
In his composition he was growing away from piano work,--he felt that
the future must mean larger, probably orchestral, forms, for him, and
his dream of an ultimate leisure was a dream for which his friends can
be thankful. He did not end with despair at his heart that the
distracting work, the yearly drudgery, were to go on forever.
His preferences in music were governed by the independence which
characterised his intellectual judgments. Of the moderns, Wagner was
his god; for Liszt he had an unbounded admiration, though he detected
the showman, the mere juggler, in him; Tchaikovsky stirred
him mightily; Brahms did not as a rule give him pleasure, though
certain of that master's more fertile moments compelled his
appreciation. Grieg he delighted in. To him he dedicated both his
"Norse" and "Keltic" sonatas. In response to his request for
permission to inscribe the first of these to his eminent contemporary,
he received from Grieg the following delectable letter--one of the
Norwegian's very few attempts at English composition (I quote it
verbatim; the spelling is Grieg's):--
COPENHAGEN, 26/10/99.
Hotel King of Denmark.
MY DEAR SIR!
Will you remit me in bad English to express my best thanks for
your kind letter and for the sympathi you feel for my music. Of
course it will be a great honor and pleasure for me to accept your
dedication.
Some years ago I thought it possible to shake hands with you in
your own country. But unfortunately my delicat health does not
seem to agree. At all events, if we are not to meet, I am glad to
read in the papers of your artistical success in Amerika.
With my best wishes,
I am, dear Sir,
Yours very truly,
EDVARD GRIEG.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A LETTER FROM GRIEG TO MACDOWELL,
ACCEPTING THE DEDICATION OF THE "NORSE" SONATA. ONE OF GRIEG'S RARE
ATTEMPTS AT ENGLISH COMPOSITION (SEE PAGE 73)]
I may quote also, in this place, because of its unusual interest, a
letter written (in German) by Grieg to Mrs. MacDowell when he learned
of her husband's collapse:--
CHRISTIANIA,
December 14, 1905.
DEAR MADAM:
The news of MacDowell's serious illness has deeply affected me.
Permit me therefore to express to you my own and my wife's
sincerest sympathy for you. I am a great admirer of MacDowell's
Muse, and would regard it as a severe blow if his best creative
period should be so hastily broken off. From all that I hear of
your husband, his qualities as a man are as remarkable as his
qualities as an artist. He is a complete Personality, with an
unusually sympathetic and sensitive nervous system. Such a
temperament gives one the capacity not only for moods of the
highest transport, but for an unspeakable sorrow tenfold more
profound. This is the unsolvable riddle. An artist so ideally
endowed [_ein so ideal angelegter Künstler_] as MacDowell must ask
himself: Why have I received from nature this delicately strung
lyre, if I were better off without it? So unmerciful is Life that
every artist must ask himself this question. The only consolation
is: Work--yes, even the severest labours. ... _But_: the artist is
an optimist. Otherwise he would be no artist. He believes and
hopes in the triumph of the good and the beautiful. He trusts in
his lucky star till his last breath. And you, the wife of a highly
gifted artist, will not and must not lose hope! In similar cases,
happily, one often witnesses a seemingly inexplicable recovery. If
it can give MacDowell a moment's cheer, say to him that he has in
distant Norway a warm and understanding friend who feels for him,
and wishes from his heart that for him, as for you, better times
may soon come.
With best greeting to you both,
Your respectful
EDVARD GRIEG.
MacDowell's feeling in regard to Strauss, whom he considered to have
developed what he called the "suggestive" (delineative) power of music
at the expense of its finer potentialities, is indicated in a lecture
which he prepared on the subject of "Suggestion in Music." "'Thus
Spake Zarathustra,'" he wrote, "may be considered the apotheosis of
this power of suggestion in tonal colour, and in it I believe we can
see the tendency I allude to [the tendency "to elevate what should be
a means of adding power and intensity to musical speech, to the
importance of musical speech itself"]. It stuns by its glorious
magnificence of tonal texture. The suggestion, at the beginning, of
the rising sun, is a mighty example of the overwhelming power of
tone-colour. The upward sweep of the music to the highest regions of
light has something splendrous about it; and yet I remember once
hearing in London a song sung in the street at night that seemed to me
to contain a truer germ of music."--From which it will be seen that
there were limits to the aesthetic sympathy of even so liberal and
divining an appreciator as MacDowell.
The modern Frenchmen he knew scarcely at all. Some of d'Indy's earlier
music he had heard and admired: but that he would have cared for such
a score as Debussy's "La Mer" I very much doubt. I remember his
amusement over what he called the "queerness" of a sonata by the
Belgian Lekeu for violin and piano, which he had read or heard. It is
likely that he would have found little to attract him in the more
characteristic music of d'Indy, Debussy, and Ravel; his instincts and
temperament led him into a wholly different region of expression. He
was a prophet of modernity; but it was a modernity that he alone
exemplifies: it has no exact parallel.
Concerning the classics he had his own views. Of Bach he wrote that he
believed him to have accomplished his work as "one of the world's
mightiest tone-poets not by means of the contrapuntal methods of his
day, but in spite of them. The laws of canon and fugue are based upon
as prosaic a foundation as those of the Rondo and Sonata Form, and I
find it impossible to imagine their ever having been a spur, an
incentive, to poetic musical speech."
Of Mozart he wrote: "It is impossible to forget the fact that in his
piano works he was first and foremost a piano virtuoso, a child
prodigy: of whom filigree work (we cannot call this Orientalism, for
it was more or less of German pattern, traced from the _fioriture_ of
the Italian opera singer) was expected by the public for which his
sonatas were written.... We need freshness and sincerity in forming
our judgments of art.... If we read on one page of some history (every
history of music has such a page) that Mozart's sonatas are sublime;
that they far transcend anything written for the harpsichord or
clavichord by Haydn or his contemporaries, we are apt to echo the
saying ... But let us look the thing straight in the face: Mozart's
sonatas are compositions entirely unworthy of the author of 'The Magic
Flute' and 'Don Giovanni,' or of any composer with pretensions to more
than mediocre talent. They are written in a style of flashy
harpsichord virtuosity such as Liszt in his most despised moments
never descended to. Yet I am well aware that this statement would be
dismissed as either absurd or heretical, according to the point of
view of the particular objector."
Of Mendelssohn he said: "Mendelssohn professed to be an 'absolutist'
in music. As a matter of fact, he stands on the same ground that Liszt
and Berlioz did; for almost everything he wrote, even to the smallest
piano piece, he furnished with an explanatory title.... Formalist
though he was, his work often exhibits eccentricities of form--as, for
instance, in the Scotch Symphony, where, in the so-called 'exposition'
of the first movement, he throws in an extra little theme that laps
over his frame with a jaunty disregard of the rules that is
delightful.... His technic of piano writing was perfect; compared with
Beethoven's it was a revelation. He never committed the fault of mere
virtuoso writing, which is remarkable when we consider how strong a
temptation there must have been to do so. In his piano music can be
found the germs of most of the pianistic innovations that are usually
identified with other composers--for instance, the manner of
enveloping the melody with runs, the discovery of which has been
ascribed to Thalberg, but which we find in Mendelssohn's first
Prelude, written in 1833. The interlocking passages which have become
so prevalent in modern music we find in his compositions dating from
1835."
Of Schumann he said happily: "His music is not avowed programme-music;
neither is it, as was much of Schubert's, pure delight in beautiful
sound. It did not break through formalism by sheer violence of
emotion, as did Beethoven's: it represents the rhapsodical revery of
an inspired poet to whom no imaginative vagary seems strange or alien,
and who has the faculty of relating his visions, never attempting to
give them coherence, and unaware of their character until perhaps
when, awakened from his dream, he naïvely wonders what they may have
meant--you remember that he added titles to his music after it was
composed. He put his dreams in music and guessed their meaning
afterward."
Of Liszt and Chopin: "To all of this new, strange music [the piano
music of the Romantics] Liszt and Chopin added the wonderful tracery
of Orientalism. The difference between these two is, that with Chopin
this tracery developed poetic thought as with a thin gauze; whereas
with Liszt [in his piano music] the embellishment itself made the
starting-point for almost a new art in tonal combination, the effects
of which one sees on every hand to-day. To realise its influence one
need only compare the easy mastery of the arabesque displayed in the
simplest piano piece of to-day with the awkward and gargoyle-like
figuration of Beethoven and his predecessors. We may justly attribute
this to Liszt rather than to Chopin, whose nocturne embellishments are
but first cousins to those of the Englishman, John Field."
Of Wagner: "His music-dramas, shorn of the fetters of the actual
spoken word, emancipated from the materialism of acting, painting, and
furniture, must be considered the greatest achievement in our art."
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."
For an interesting and closely observed description of MacDowell's
technical peculiarities as a piano player I am indebted to his friend
and pupil, Mr. T.P. Currier, who had followed MacDowell's career as a
pianist from the time of his first public appearance in Boston:
"[His finger velocity] was at that time [in 1888] the most striking
characteristic of his playing," says Mr. Currier. "For him, too, it
was a mere bagatelle. He took to prestissimo like a duck to water. He
could, in fact, play fast more easily than he could slowly. One of his
ever-present fears was that in performance his fingers would run away
with him. And many hours were spent in endeavours to control such an
embarrassing tendency. This extraordinary velocity, acquired in the
Paris Conservatory, and from his friend and teacher, Carl Heymann, of
Frankfort, invariably set his listeners agape, and was always one of
the chief sensations at his concerts.
"But for this finger speeding and for his other technical acquirements
as well, MacDowell cared little, except as they furthered his one
absorbing aim. He was heart and soul a composer, and to be able to
play his own music as he heard it in his inner ear was his single spur
to practice. From the time of his complete immersion in composition,
his ideas of pianistic effects, of tone colour, gradually led him
farther and farther away from conventional pianism. Scales and
arpeggios, as commonly rendered, had no longer interest or charm for
him. He cared for finger passages only when they could be made to
suggest what he wanted them to suggest in his own colour-scheme. With
his peculiar touch and facility at command, he rejoiced in turning
such passages into streams and swirls of tone, marked with strong
accents and coloured with vivid, dynamic contrasts.
"That his passage playing rarely sounded clean and pure--like that of
a Rosenthal--was due not only to his musical predilections, but to his
hand formation as well. His hand was broad and rather thick-set, and
tremendously muscular. It would not bend back at the knuckles; and the
fingers also had no well-defined knuckle movement. It appears,
therefore, that he could not, if he would, have succeeded on more
conventional technical lines. Gradually he developed great strength
and intense activity in the middle joints, which enabled him to play
with a very close, often overlapping, touch, and to maintain extremely
rapid tempi in legato or staccato with perfect ease and little
fatigue. With this combination of velocity and close touch, it was a
slight matter to produce those pianistic effects which were especially
dear to him.
"MacDowell's finger development has been thus dwelt upon, because it
was, as has been said, the feature of his technic which immediately
surprised and captivated his hearers. Less noticeable was his wrist
and octave work. But his chord playing, though also relatively
unattractive, was even in those early days almost as uncommon in its
way as was his velocity. And in this field of technic, during his
later years, when in composition his mind turned almost wholly to this
mode of expression, he reached a plane of tonal effect which, for
variety, from vague, shadowy, mysterious _ppp_, to virile, orchestral
_ffff_, has never been surpassed by any pianist who has visited these
shores in recent years. His tone in chord playing, it is true, was
often harsh, and this fault also appeared in his melodic delivery. But
in both cases any unmusical effect was so greatly overbalanced by many
rare and beautiful qualities of tone production, that it was easily
forgiven and forgotten.
"Wonderful tone blending in finger passages; a peculiarly crisp, yet
veiled staccato; chord playing extraordinary in variety,--tender,
mysterious, sinister, heroic; a curiously unconventional yet effective
melodic delivery; playing replete with power, vitality, and dramatic
significance, always forcing upon the ear the phrase, never the
tickling of mere notes; a really marvellous command and use of both
pedals,--these were the characteristics of MacDowell's pianistic art
as he displayed it in the exposition of his own works. Unquestionably
he was a born pianist. If it had not been for his genius for
composition, he would, without doubt, have been known as a brilliant
and forceful interpreter of the greatest piano literature. But his
compositional bent turned him completely away from mere piano playing.
He was a composer-pianist, and as such he ever desired to be
regarded."
[Illustration: THE HOUSE AT PETERBORO, NEW HAMPSHIRE, WHERE MACDOWELL
SPENT HIS SUMMERS]
As a pianist, as in all other matters touching his own capacities, he
was often tortured by doubts concerning the effect of his
performances. "I shall never forget," recalls his wife, "the first
time he played it [the "Eroica" sonata] in Boston. We all thought he
did it wonderfully. But when I went around to the green-room door to
find him, fearing something might be wrong, as he had not come to me,
he had gone. When I got home, accompanied by two friends, there he was
almost in a corner, white, and as if he were guilty of some crime, and
he said as we came in: 'I can play better than that. But I was so
tired!' We almost wept with the pity of the unnecessary suffering,
which was yet so real and intense. In a short time he was more
himself, and naïvely admitted that he had played three movements well,
but had been a 'd---- fool in one.' I grew to be very used to this as
the years went on, for he could not help emphasising to himself what
he did badly, and ignoring the good."
He left few uncompleted works. There are among his manuscripts three
movements of a symphony, two movements of a suite for string
orchestra, a suite for violin and piano, some songs and piano pieces,
and a large number of sketches. He had schemes for a music-drama on an
Arthurian subject, and sketched a single act of it. He had planned
this work upon novel lines: there was to be comparatively little
singing, and much emphasis was to be laid upon the orchestral
commentary; the action was to be carried on by a combination of
pantomime and tableaux, and the scenic element was to be
conspicuous--a suggestion which he got in part from E.A. Abbey's Holy
Grail frescoes in the Boston Public Library. But he had determined to
write his own text: and the prospective labour of this, made more
formidable by his restricted leisure, finally discouraged him, and he
abandoned the project. Five years before his death he destroyed the
sketches that he had made; only a few fragments remain.
A rare and admirable man!--a man who would have been a remarkable
personality if he had not written a note of music. His faults--and he
was far from being a paragon--were never petty or contemptible: they
were truly the defects of his qualities--of his honesty, his courage,
his passionate and often reckless zeal in the promotion of what he
believed to be sound and fine in art and in life. Mr. Philip Hale,
whose long friendship with MacDowell gives him the right to speak with
peculiar authority, and whose habit is that of sobriety in speech, has
written of him in words whose justice and felicity cannot be bettered:
"A man of blameless life, he was never pharasaical; he was
compassionate toward the slips and failings of poor humanity. He was a
true patriot, proud and hopeful of his country and of its artistic
future, but he could not brook the thought of patriotism used as a
cloak to cover mediocrity in art.... He was one who worked steadily
and courageously in the face of discouragement; who never courted by
trickery or device the favour of the public; who never fawned upon
those who might help him; who in his art kept himself pure and
unspotted."
"O that so many pitchers of rough clay
Should prosper and the porcelain break in two!"
THE MUSIC-MAKER