AN AMERICAN COMPOSER
THE PASSING OF EDWARD MACDOWELL
Whom the gods love----!
Admirers of Edward MacDowell's Sonata Tragica may recall the last
movement, in which, after a triumphant climax, the curtain falls on
tragic misery. It was the very Greek-like belief of MacDowell that
nothing is more sublimely awful than "to heighten the darkness of
tragedy by making it follow closely on the heels of triumph." This
he accomplished in his first sonata, and fate has ironically
transposed to the life of its composer the cruel and tragic drama of
his own music. Despite occasional days brightened by a flitting
hope, the passing of Edward MacDowell has begun. He is no longer an
earth-dweller. His body is here, but his brain elsewhere. Not mad,
not melancholy, not sunken in the stupor of indifference, his mind
is translated to a region where serenity, even happiness, dwells.
It is doubtless the temporary arrest of the dread mental malady
before it plunges its victims into darkness. Luckily, with the
advent of that last phase, the body will also succumb, and the most
poetic composer of music in America be for us but a fragrant memory.
Irony is a much-abused word, yet does it not seem the very summit of
pitiless irony for a man of MacDowell's musical and intellectual
equipment and physical health to be stricken down at the moment
when, after the hard study of twenty-five years, he has, as the
expression goes, found himself? And the gods were good to him--too
good.
At his cradle poetry and music presided. He was a born tone-poet. He
had also the painter's eye and the interior vision of the seer. A
mystic and a realist. The practical side of his nature was shown by
his easy grasp of the technics of pianoforte-playing. He had a
large, muscular hand, with a formidable grip on the keyboard. Much
has been said of the idealist MacDowell, but this young man, who had
in his veins Scotch, Irish, and English blood, loved athletic
sports; loved, like Hazlitt, a fast and furious boxing-match. The
call of his soul won him for music and poetry. Otherwise he could
have been a sea-captain, a soldier, or an explorer in far-away
countries. He had the physique; he had the big, manly spirit. We are
grateful, selfishly grateful, considering his life's tragedy, that
he became a composer.
Here, again, in all this abounding vitality, the irony of the skies
is manifest. Never a dissipated man, without a touch of the
improvidence we ascribe to genius, a practical moralist--rare in any
social condition--moderate in his tastes, though not a Puritan, he
nevertheless has been mowed down by the ruthless reaper of souls as
if his were negligible clay. But he was reckless of the most
precious part of him, his brain. He killed that organ by overwork.
Not for gain--the money-getting ideal and this man were widely
asunder--but for the love of teaching, for the love of sharing with
others the treasures in his overflowing storehouse, and primarily
for the love of music. He, American as he was--it is sad to speak of
him in the past tense--and in these piping days of the pursuit of
the gold piece, held steadfast to his art. He attempted to do what
others have failed in, he attempted to lead, here in our huge, noisy
city, antipathetic to aesthetic creation, the double existence of a
composer and a pedagogue. He burned away the delicate neurons of the
cortical cells, and to-day he cannot say "pianoforte" without a
trial. He suffers from aphasia, and locomotor ataxia has begun to
manifest itself. It would be tragedy in the household of any man; it
is doubly so in the case of Edward MacDowell.
He has just passed forty-five years and there are to his credit some
sixty works, about one hundred and thirty-two compositions in all.
These include essays in every form, except music-drama--symphonic
and lyric, concertos and sonatas for piano, little piano pieces of
delicate workmanship, charged with poetic meanings, suites for
orchestra and a romance for violoncello, with orchestral
accompaniment. As a boy of fifteen MacDowell went to the Paris
Conservatoire, there entering the piano classes of Marmontel. It was
in 1876. Two years later I saw him at the same institution and later
in comparing notes we discovered that we had both attended a concert
at the Trocadero, wherein Nicholas Rubinstein, the brilliant brother
of Anton, played the B flat minor concerto of a youthful and unknown
composer, Peter Illyitch Tschaikovsky by name. This same concerto
had been introduced to America in 1876 by Hans von Buelow, to whom it
is dedicated. Rubinstein's playing took hold of young MacDowell's
imagination. He saw there was no chance of mastering such a
torrential style in Paris, or, for that matter, in Germany. He had
enjoyed lessons from Teresa Carreno, but the beautiful Venezuelan
was not then the virtuosa of to-day.
So MacDowell, who was accompanied by his mother, a sage woman and
deeply in sympathy with her son's aims, went to Frankfort, where he
had the benefit of Karl Heymann's tuition. He was the only pianist I
ever heard who could be compared to our Rafael Joseffy. But his
influences, while marked in the development of his American pupil,
did not weaken MacDowell's individuality. Studies in composition
under Joachim Raff followed, and then he journeyed to Weimar for his
baptism of fire at the hands of Liszt. That genial Prospero had
broken his wand of virtuoso and devoted himself to the culture of
youthful genius and his own compositions. He was pleased by the
force, the surety, the brilliancy and the poetic qualities of
MacDowell's playing, and he laughingly warned Eugen d'Albert to look
to his laurels. But music was in the very bones of MacDowell, and a
purely virtuoso career had no attraction for him. He married in 1884
Marian Nevins, of New York, herself a pianist and a devoted
propagandist of his music. The pair settled in Wiesbaden, and it was
the happiest period of MacDowell's career. He taught; he played as
"guest" in various German cities; above all, he composed. His entire
evolution is surveyed in Mr. Lawrence Gilman's sympathetic
monograph. It was in Wiesbaden that he laid the foundation of his
solid technique as a composer.
I once asked him during one of our meetings how he had summoned the
courage to leave such congenial surroundings. In that half-smiling,
half-shy way of his, so full of charm and naivete, he told me his
house had burned down and he had resolved to return home and make
enough money to build another. He came to America in 1888 and found
himself, if not famous, at least well known. To Frank van der
Stucken belongs the glory of having launched the young composer, and
so long ago as 1886 in the old Chickering Hall. Some would like to
point to the fact that America was MacDowell's artistic undoing, but
the truth is against them. As a matter of musical history he
accomplished his best work in the United States, principally on his
farm at Peterboro, N. H.--hardly, one would imagine, artistic soil
for such a dreamer in tones. But life has a way of contradicting our
theories. Teaching, I have learned, was not pursued to excess by
MacDowell, who had settled in Boston. Yet I wish there were
sumptuary legislation for such cases. Why should an artist like
MacDowell have been forced into the shafts of dull routine? It is
the larger selfishness, all this, but I cling to it. MacDowell
belonged to the public. Joseffy belongs to the public. They
doubtless did and do much good as teachers, but the public is the
loser. Besides, if MacDowell, who was a virtuoso had confined
himself to recitals he might not----
Alas! all this is bootless imagining. He launched himself with his
usual unselfishness into the advancement of his scholars, and when
in 1896 he was called to the chair of music at Columbia the
remaining seven years of his incumbency he gave up absolutely to his
classes. A sabbatical year intervened. He went to Switzerland for a
rest. Then he made a tour of the West, a triumphal tour; and later
followed the regrettable difference with Columbia. He resigned in
1904, and I doubt if he had had a happy day since--that is, until
the wave of forgetfulness came over him and blotted out all
recollections.
As a pianist I may only quote what Rafael Joseffy once said to me
after a performance of the MacDowell D minor concerto by its
composer: "What's the use of a poor pianist trying to compete with a
fellow who writes his own music and then plays it the way MacDowell
does?" It was said jestingly, but, as usual, when Joseffy opens his
mouth there is a grain of wisdom in the speech. MacDowell's French
training showed in his "pianism" in the velocity, clarity, and
pearly quality of his scales and trills. He had the elegance of the
salon player; he knew the traditions. But he was modern, German and
Slavic in his combined musical interpretation and fiery attack. His
tone was large; at times it was brutal. This pianist did not shine
in a small hall. He needed space, as do his later compositions.
There was something both noble and elemental in the performance of
his own sonatas. At his instrument his air of preoccupation, his
fine poetic head, the lines of which were admirably salient on the
concert stage, and his passion in execution were notable details in
the harmonious picture. Like Liszt, MacDowell and his Steinway were
as the rider and his steed. They seemed inseparable. Under the
batons of Nikisch, Gericke, Paur, and Seidl we heard him, and for
once at least the critics were unanimous.
When I first studied the MacDowell music I called the composer "a
belated Romantic." A Romantic he is by temperament, while his
training under Raff further accentuated that tendency. It is a
dangerous matter to make predictions of a contemporary composer, yet
a danger critically courted in these times of rapid-fire judgments.
I have been a sinner myself, and am still unregenerate, for if it be
sinful to judge hastily in the affirmative, by the same token it is
quite as grave an error to judge hastily in the negative. So I shall
dare the possible contempt of the succeeding critical generation,
which I expect--and hope--will not calmly reverse our dearest
predictions, and range myself on the side of MacDowell. And with
this reservation; I called him the most poetic composer of America.
He would be a poetic composer in any land; yet it seems to me that
his greatest, because his most individual, work is to be found in
his four piano sonatas. I am always subdued by the charm of his
songs; but he did not find his fullest expression in his lyrics.
The words seemed to hamper the bold wing strokes of his inspiration.
He did not go far enough in his orchestral work to warrant our
saying: "Here is something new!" He shows the influence of Wagner
slightly, of Grieg, of Raff, of Liszt, in his first Orchestral
Suite, his Hamlet and Ophelia, Launcelot and Elaine; The Saracens
and Lovely Alda, the Indian Suite, and in the two concertos. The
form is still struggling to emerge from the bonds of the
Romantics--of classic influence there is little trace. But the
general effect is fragmentary. It is not the real MacDowell,
notwithstanding the mastery of technical material, the genuine
feeling for orchestral colour, which is natural, not studied. There
are poetic moods--MacDowell is always a poet--yet no path-breaker.
Indeed, he seemed as if hesitating. I remember how we discussed
Brahms, Tschaikovsky, and Richard Strauss. The former he admired as
a master builder; the latter piqued his curiosity tremendously,
particularly Also Sprach Zarathustra. I think that Tschaikovsky made
the deepest appeal, though he said that the Russian's music sounded
better than it was. Grieg he admired, but Grieg could never have
drawn the long musical line we find in the MacDowell sonatas.
The fate of intermediate types is inevitable. Music is an art of
specialisation: the Wagner music-drama, Chopin piano music, Schubert
songs, Beethoven symphony, Liszt symphonic poems, and Richard
Strauss tone-poems, all these are unique. MacDowell has invented
many lovely melodies. That the Indian duet for orchestra, the
Woodland Sketches, New England Idyls, the Sea Pieces--To the Sea is
a wonderful transcription of the mystery, and the salt and savour of
the ocean--will have a long life, but not as long as the piano
sonatas. By them he will stand or fall. MacDowell never goes
chromatically mad on his harmonic tripod, nor does he tear passion
to tatters in his search of the dramatic. If he recalls any English
poet it is Keats, and like Keats he is simple and sensuous in his
imagery, and a lover of true romance; not the sham ecstasies of mock
mediaeval romance, but that deep and tender sentiment which we
encounter in the poetry of Keats--in the magic of a moon half veiled
by flying clouds; in the mystery and scent of old and tangled
gardens. I should call MacDowell a landscape-painter had I not heard
his sonata music. Those sonatas, the Tragica, Eroica, Norse, and
Keltic, with their broad, coloured narrative, ballad-like tone,
their heroic and chivalric accents, epic passion, and feminine
tenderness. The psychology is simple if you set this music against
that of Strauss, of Loeffler, or of Debussy.
But it is noble, noble as the soul of the man who conceived it.
Elastic in form, orchestral in idea, these sonatas--which are looser
spun in the web than Liszt's--will keep alive the name of MacDowell.
This statement must not be considered as evidence that I fail to
enjoy his other work. I do enjoy much of it, especially the Indian
Orchestral Suite; but the sonatas stir the blood, above all the
imagination. When the Tragica appeared I did not dream of three such
successors. Now I like best the Keltic, with its dark magic and its
tales of Deirdre and the "great Cuchullin." This fourth sonata is as
Keltic as the combined poetic forces of the neo-Celtic renascence in
Ireland.
I believe MacDowell, when so sorely stricken, was at the parting of
the ways. He spoke vaguely to me of studies for new symphonic works,
presumably in the symphonic-poem form of Liszt. He would have always
remained the poet, and perhaps have pushed to newer scenes, but,
like Schumann, Donizetti, Smetana and Hugo Wolf, his brain gave way
under the strain of intense study. The composition of music involves
and taxes all the higher cerebral centres.
The privilege was accorded me of visiting the sick man at his hotel
several weeks ago, and I am glad I saw him, for his appearance
dissipated the painful impression I had conjured up. Our interview,
brief as it was, became the reverse of morbid or unpleasant before
it terminated. With his mental disintegration sunny youth has
returned to the composer. In snowy white, he looks not more than
twenty-five years old, until you note the grey in his thick,
rebellious locks. There is still gold in his moustache and his eyes
are luminously blue. His expression suggests a spirit purged of all
grossness waiting for the summons. He smiles, but not as a madman;
he talks hesitatingly, but never babbles. There is continuity in his
ideas for minutes. Sometimes the word fits the idea; oftener he uses
one foreign to his meaning. His wife, of whose devotion, almost
poignant in its earnestness, it would be too sad to dwell upon, is
his faithful interpreter. He moves with difficulty. He plays
dominoes, but seldom goes to the keyboard. He reads slowly and, like
the unfortunate Friedrich Nietzsche, he rereads one page many times.
I could not help recalling what Mrs. Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche
told me in Weimar of her brother. One day, noticing that she
silently wept, the poet-philosopher exclaimed:
"But why do you weep, little sister? Are we not very happy?"
MacDowell is very happy and his wife is braver than Nietzsche's
sister. One fragment of his conversation I recall. With glowing
countenance he spoke of the thunderbolt in his wonderfully realistic
piano poem, The Eagle. There had been a lightning-storm during the
afternoon. Then he told me how he had found water by means of the
hazel wand on his New Hampshire farm--a real happening. As I went
away I could not help remembering that the final words I should ever
hear uttered by this friend were of bright fire and running water
and dream-music.
[The above appeared in the New York _Herald_, June 24, 1906,
and is reprinted by request. Edward MacDowell died January 23,
1908.]