EARLY EXPERIMENTS
MacDowell's impulse toward significant expression was not slow in
declaring itself. The first "modern suite" (op. 10), the earliest of
his listed works, which at first glance seems to be merely a group of
contrasted movements of innocently traditional aspect, with the
expected Præludium, Presto, Intermezzo, Fugue, etc., contains,
nevertheless, the germ of the programmatic principle; for at the head
of the third movement (Andantino and Allegretto) one comes upon a
motto from Virgil--"Per amica silentia lunæ," and the Rhapsodic is
introduced with the
"Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate"
of Dante. The Præludium of the second piano suite, op. 14, is also
annotated, having been suggested by lines from Byron's "Manfred."
In the "Zwei Fantasiestücke", op. 17--"Erzählung" and "Hexentanz"--but
more particularly in the "Wald-Idyllen" of op. 19--"Waldesstille,"
"Spiel der Nymphen," "Träumerei," and "Driadentanz,"--a definite
poetic concept is implied. Here the formative influence of Raff is
evident. The works which follow--"Drei Poesien" ("Nachts am Meere,"
"Erzählung aus der Ritterzeit," "Ballade"), and the "Mondbilder,"
after Hans Christian Andersen--are of a similar kind. The romanticism
which pervades them is not of a very finely distilled quality: they are
not, that is to say, the product of a clarified and wholly personal
vision--of the vision which prompted the issue of such things as the
"Woodland Sketches," the "Sea Pieces," and the "New England Idyls." In
these earlier works one feels that the romantic view has been assumed
somewhat vicariously--one can imagine the favourite pupil of Raff
producing a group of "Wald-Idyllen" quite as a matter of course, and
without interior conviction. Nor is the style marked by individuality,
except in occasional passages. There are traces of his peculiar
quality in the first suite,--in the 6/8 passage of the Rhapsodie, for
example,--in portions of the first piano concerto (the _a piacere_
passage toward the close of the first movement is particularly
characteristic), in the _Erzählung_, and in No. 3 (_Träumerei_) of the
_Wald-Idyllen_; but the prevailing note of his style at this time was,
quite naturally, strongly Teutonic: one encounters in it the trail of
Liszt, of Schumann, of Raff, of Wagner.
Not until one reaches the "Hamlet and Ophelia" is it apparent that he
is beginning to find himself. This work was written before he had
completed his twenty-fourth year; yet the music is curiously ripe in
feeling and accomplishment. There is breadth and steadiness of view in
the conception, passion and sensitiveness in its embodiment: It is
mellower, of a deeper and finer beauty, than anything he had
previously done, though nowhere has it the inspiration of his later
works.
The second piano concerto (op. 23), completed a year later, is fairly
within the class of that order of music which it has been generally
agreed to describe as "absolute." It is innocent of any programme,
save for the fact that some of the ideas prompted by "Much Ado About
Nothing," which were to form a "Beatrice and Benedick" symphonic poem,
were, as I have related in a previous chapter, incorporated in the
scherzo. Together with its companion work, the first piano concerto;
the "Romanza" for 'cello and orchestra; the concert study, op. 36, and
such conventional _morceaux_ as the early "Serenata" and "Barcarolle"
(of which, it should be noted, there are extremely few among his
productions), it represents the very limited body of his writing which
does not, in some degree, propose and enforce a definite poetic
concept. Not elsewhere in his earlier work has MacDowell marshalled
the materials of his art with so confident an artistry as he exhibits
in this concerto. In substance the work is not extraordinary. The
manner derives something from Grieg, more from Liszt, and there is
comparatively little disclosure of personality. But the manipulation
is, throughout, the work of a music-wright of brilliant executive
capacity. In fundamental logic, in cohesion, flexibility, and symmetry
of organism, it is a brilliantly successful accomplishment. As in all
of MacDowell's writing, its allegiance is to the basic principles of
structure and design, rather than to a traditional and arbitrary
formula.
The succeeding opus (24), comprising the "Humoreske," "March," "Cradle
Song," and "Czardas," is unimportant. Of the four pieces the gracious
"Cradle Song" is of the most worth. The group as a whole belongs to
that inconsiderable portion of his output which one cannot accept as
of serious artistic consequence. With the "Lancelot and Elaine" (op.
25), however, one comes upon a work of the grade of the "Hamlet and
Ophelia" music. MacDowell had a peculiar affinity for the spirit of
the Arthurian tales, and he was happy in whatever musical
transmutation of them he attempted. This tone-poem is, as he avows,
"after Tennyson." The work follows consistently the larger action of
the poem, and musical equivalents are sought and found for such
crucial incidents as the meeting with Elaine, the tournament,
Lancelot's downfall, his return to the court and the interview with
Guinevere, the apparition of the funeral barge, and the soliloquy of
Lancelot by the river bank. The work is dramatically conceived. There
are passages of impressive tenderness,--as in the incident of the
approaching barge; of climactic force,--as in the passage portraying
the casting away of the trophies; and there are admirable details of
workmanship. The scoring is full and adroit, though not very
elaborate. As always with him, the instrumental texture is richly
woven, although his utilisation of the possibilities of the orchestra
is far from exhaustive. One misses, for example, the colouring of
available harp effects, for which he appeared to have a distaste,
since the instrument is not required in any of his orchestral works.
That he was not satisfied with the scoring of the work is known. He
remarked to Mr. Philip Hale that it was "too full of horns"; and in
his own copy of the score, which I possess, he has made in pencil
numerous changes in the instrumentation, much to its improvement; he
has, for instance, in accord with his expressed feeling, reduced the
prominence of the horns, allotting their parts, in certain important
instances, to the wood-wind, trombones, or trumpets.
The "Six Idyls after Goethe," for piano (op. 28), are noteworthy as
foreshadowing the candid impressionism which was to have its finest
issue in the "Woodland Sketches," "Sea Pieces," and "New England
Idyls." The Goethe paraphrases, although they have only a tithe of the
graphic nearness and felicity of the later pieces, are yet fairly
successful in their attempt to find a musical correspondence for
certain definitely stated concepts and ideas--a partial fulfilment of
the method implied in the earlier "Wald-Idyllen." He presents
himself here as one who has yielded his imagination to an intimate
contemplation of the natural world, and who already has, in some
degree, the faculty of uttering whatever revelation of its loveliness
or majesty has been vouchsafed. At once, in studying these pieces, one
observes a wide departure in method and accomplishment from the style
of the "Wald-Idyllen." In those, it seemed, the poet had somehow
failed to compose "with his eye on the object": the vision lacked
steadiness, lacked penetration--or it may be that the vision was
present, but not the power of notation. In the Goethe paraphrases, on
the other hand, we are given, in a measure, the sense of the thing
perceived; I say "in a measure," for his power of acute and
sympathetic observation and of eloquent transmutation had not yet come
to its highest pitch. Of the six "Idyls," three--"In the Woods,"
"Siesta," and "To the Moonlight"--are memorable, though uneven; and of
these the third, after Goethe's "An den Mond," adumbrates faintly
MacDowell's riper manner. The "Silver Clouds," "Flute Idyl,"[11] and
"Blue Bell" are decidedly less characteristic.
[11] The poems which suggested this and the preceding piece were used
again by MacDowell in two of the most admirable of the "Eight Songs,"
op. 47.
His third orchestral work, the symphonic poem "Lamia," is based upon
the fantastic (and what Mr. Howells would call unconscionably
"romanticistic") poem of Keats. Begun during his last year in
Wiesbaden (1888), and completed the following winter in Boston, it
stands, in the order of MacDowell's orchestral pieces, between
"Lancelot and Elaine" and the two "fragments" after the "Song of
Roland." On a fly-leaf of the score MacDowell has written this
glossary of the story as told by Keats:
"Lamia, an enchantress in the form of a serpent, loves Lycius, a
young Corinthian. In order to win him she prays to Hermes, who
answers her appeal by transforming her into a lovely maiden.
Lycius meets her in the wood, is smitten with love for her, and
goes with her to her enchanted palace, where the wedding is
celebrated with great splendour. But suddenly Apollonius appears;
he reveals the magic. Lamia again assumes the form of a serpent,
the enchanted palace vanishes, and Lycius is found lifeless."
Now this is obviously just the sort of thing to stir the musical
imagination of a young composer nourished on Liszt, Raff, and Wagner;
and MacDowell (he was then in his twenty-seventh year) composed his
tone-poem with evident gusto. Yet it is the weakest of his orchestral
works--the weakest and the least characteristic. There is much Liszt
in the score, and a good deal of Wagner. Only occasionally--as in the
_pianissimo_ passage for flutes, clarinets, and divided strings,
following the first outburst of the full orchestra--does his own
individuality emerge with any positiveness. MacDowell withheld the
score from publication, at the time of its composition, because of his
uncertainty as to its effect. He had not had an opportunity to secure
a reading of it by one of the _Cur-Orchester_ which had accommodatingly
tried over his preceding scores at their rehearsals; and such a thing
was of course out of the question in America. Not only was he
reluctant to put it forth without such a test, but he lacked the funds
to pay for its publication. He came to realise in later years, of
course, that the music was immature and far from characteristic,
though he still had a genuine affection for it. In a talk which I had
with him a year before his collapse, he gave me the impression that he
considered it at least as good a piece of work as its predecessors,
"Hamlet and Ophelia" and "Lancelot and Elaine," though he made sport,
in his characteristic way, of its occasional juvenility and its
Wagneristic allegiances. He intended ultimately to revise and publish
the score, and he allowed it to remain on the list of his works. After
his death it was concluded that it would be wise to print the music,
for several reasons. These were, first, because of the fear lest,
if it were allowed to remain in manuscript, it might at some future
time suffer from well-meant attempts at revision; and, secondly,
because of the chance that it might be put forward, after the death
of those who knew its history, in a way which would seem to make
unwarranted pretensions for it, or would give rise to doubts as to its
authenticity. In a word, it was felt that its immediate publication
would obviate any possible misconception at some future time as to its
true relation to MacDowell's artistic evolution. It was, therefore,
published in October, 1908, twenty years after its composition, with a
dedication to Mr. Henry T. Finck.
In "Die Sarazenen" and "Die Schöne Aldâ," two "fragments" for
orchestra after the "Song of Roland," numbered op. 30, a graver note
is sounded. These "fragments," originally intended to form part of a
"Roland" symphony, were published in 1891 in their present form, the
plan for a symphony having been definitely abandoned. "Die
Sarazenen" is a transcription of the scene in which Ganelon, the
traitor in Charlemagne's camp through whose perfidy Roland met his
death, swears to commit his crime. It is a forceful conception,
barbaric in colour and rhythm, and picturesquely scored. The second
fragment, "Die Schöne Aldâ," is, however, a more memorable work,
depicting the loveliness and the grieving of Aldâ, Roland's betrothed.
In spite of its strong Wagnerian leanings, the music bears the impress
of MacDowell's own style, and it has moments of rare loveliness. Both
pieces are programmatic in bent, and, with excellent wisdom, MacDowell
has quoted upon the fly-leaf of the score those portions of the "Song
of Roland" from which the conception of the music sprang.
Like the "Idyls" after Goethe, the "Six Poems" after Heine (op. 31),
for piano, are devoted to the embodiment of a poetic subject,--with
the difference that instead of the landscape impressionism of the
Goethe studies we have a persistent impulse toward psychological
suggestion. Each of the poems which he has selected for illustration
has a burden of human emotion which the music reflects with varying
success. The style is more individualised than in the Goethe pieces,
and the invention is, on the whole, of a superior order. The "Scotch
Poem" (No. 2) is the most successful of the set; the
"... schöne, kranke Frau,
Zartdurchsichtig und marmorblass,"
and her desolate lamenting, are sharply projected, though scarcely
with the power that he would have brought to bear upon the endeavour a
decade later. Less effective, but more characteristic, is "The
Shepherd Boy" (No. 5). This is almost, at moments, MacDowell in the
happiest phase of his lighter vein. The transition from F minor to
major, after the _fermata_ on the second page, is as typical as it is
delectable; and the fifteen bars that follow are of a markedly
personal tinge. "From Long Ago" and "From a Fisherman's Hut" are less
good, and "The Post Wagon" and "Monologue" are disappointing--the
latter especially so, because the exquisite poem which he has chosen
to enforce, the matchless lyric beginning "Der Tod, das ist die kühle
Nacht," should, it seems, have offered an inspiring incentive.
In the "Four Little Poems" of op. 32 one encounters a piece which it
is possible to admire without qualification: I mean the music
conceived as an illustration to Tennyson's poem, "The Eagle." The
three other numbers of this opus, "The Brook," "Moonshine," and
"Winter," one can praise only in measured terms--although "Winter,"
which attempts a representation of the "widow bird" and frozen
landscape of Shelley's lyric, has some measures that dwell
persistently in the memory: but "The Eagle" is a superb achievement.
Its deliberate purpose is to realise in tone the imagery and
atmosphere of Tennyson's lines--an object which it accomplishes with
triumphant completeness. As a feat of sheer tone-painting one recalls
few things, of a similar scope and purpose, that surpass it in
fitness, concision, and felicity. It displays a power of imaginative
transmutation hitherto undisclosed in MacDowell's writing. Here are
precisely the severe and lonely mood of the opening lines of the poem,
the sense of inaccessible and wind-swept spaces, which Tennyson has so
magnificently and so succinctly conveyed. Here, too, are the far-off,
"wrinkled sea," and the final cataclysmic and sudden descent: yet,
despite the literalism of the close, there is no yielding of artistic
sobriety in the result, for the music has an unassailable dignity. It
remains, even to-day, one of MacDowell's most characteristic and
admirable performances.
Of the "Romance" for 'cello and orchestra (op. 35), the Concert Study
(op. 36), and "Les Orientales" (op. 37),--three _morceaux_ for
piano, after Victor Hugo,--there is no need to speak in detail.
"Perfunctory" is the word which one must use to describe the creative
impulse of which they are the ungrateful legacy--an impulse less
spontaneous, there is reason to believe, than utilitarian. Perhaps
they may most justly be characterised as almost the only instances in
which MacDowell gave heed to the possibility of a reward not primarily
and exclusively artistic. They are sentimental and unleavened, and
they are far from worthy of his gifts, though they are not without a
certain rather inexpensive charm.
[Illustration: A WINTER VIEW OF THE PETERBORO HOUSE]
The "Marionettes" of op. 38 are in a wholly different case. Published
first in 1888, the year of MacDowell's return to America, they were
afterward extensively revised, and now appear under a radically
different guise. In its present form, the group comprises six _genre_
studies--"Soubrette," "Lover," "Witch," "Clown," "Villain,"
"Sweetheart"--besides two additions: a "Prologue" and "Epilogue." Here
MacDowell is in one of his happiest moods. It was a fortunate and
charming conceit which prompted the plan of the series, with its
half-playful, half-ironic, yet lurkingly poetic suggestions; for in
spite of the mood of bantering gaiety which placed the pieces in such
mocking juxtaposition, there is, throughout, an undertone of grave and
meditative tenderness which it is one of the peculiar properties of
MacDowell's art to communicate and enforce. This is continually
apparent in "The Lover" and "Sweetheart," fugitively so in the
"Prologue," and, in an irresistible degree, in the exceedingly poetic
and deeply felt "Epilogue"--one of the most typical and beautiful of
MacDowell's smaller works. The music of these pieces is, as with other
of his earlier works that he has since revised, confusing to the
observer who attempts to place it among his productions in the order
suggested by its opus number. For although in the list of his
published works the "Marionettes" follow immediately on the heels of
the Concert Study and "Les Orientales" the form in which they are
now most generally known represents the much later period of the
"Keltic" sonata--a fact which will, however, be sufficiently evident
to anyone who studies the two versions carefully enough to perceive
the difference between more or less experimental craftsmanship and
ripe and heedful artistry. The observer will notice in these pieces,
incidentally, the abandonment of the traditional Italian terms of
expression and the substitution of English words and phrases, which
are used freely and with adroitness to indicate every shade of the
composer's meaning. In place of the stereotyped terms of the
music-maker's familiarly limited vocabulary, we have such a system of
direct and elastic expression as Schumann adopted. Thus one finds, in
the "Prologue," such unmistakable and illuminating directions as:
"with sturdy good humour," "pleadingly," "mockingly"; in the
"Soubrette"--"poutingly"; in the "Lover"--in the "Villain"--"with
sinister emphasis," "sardonically." This method, which MacDowell has
followed consistently in all his later works, has obvious advantages;
and it becomes in his hands a picturesque and stimulating means for
the conveyance of his intentions. Its defect, equally obvious, is that
it is not, like the conventional Italian terminology, universally
intelligible.
The "Twelve Studies" of op. 39 are less original in conception and of
less artistic moment than the "Marionettes." Their titles--among which
are a "Hunting Song," a "Romance," a "Dance of the Gnomes," and others
of like connotation--suggest, in a measure, that imperfectly realised
romanticism which I have before endeavoured to separate from the
intimate spirit of sincere romance which MacDowell has so often
succeeded in embodying. The same thing is true, though in a less
degree, of the suite for orchestra (op. 42). It is more Raff-like--not
in effect but in conception--than anything he has done. There are four
movements: "In a Haunted Forest," "Summer Idyl," "The Shepherdess'
Song," and "Forest Spirits," together with a supplement, "In October,"
forming part of the original suite, but not published until several
years later. The work, as a whole, has atmosphere, freshness,
buoyancy, and it is scored with exquisite skill and charm; but somehow
it does not seem either as poetic or as distinguished as one imagines
it might have been made. It is carried through with delightful high
spirits, and with an expert order of craftsmanship; but it lacks
persuasion--lacks, to put it baldly, inspiration.
Passing over a sheaf of piano pieces, the "Twelve Virtuoso Studies" of
op. 46 (of which the "Novelette" and "Improvisation" are most
noteworthy), we come to a stage of MacDowell's development in which,
for the first time, he presents himself as an assured and confident
master of musical impressionism and the possessor of a matured and
fully individualised style.