Edward MacDowell written by Lawrence Gilman
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Lawrence Gilman >> Edward MacDowell
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EDWARD MACDOWELL
A Study
by
LAWRENCE GILMAN
Author of _Phases of Modern Music_; _The Music of Tomorrow_; _Stories
of Symphonic Music_; _A Guide to Strauss' "Salome"_; _Debussy's
"Pelleas el Melisande": A Guide to the Opera_; _Aspects of Modern
Opera_; etc.
London: John Lane, The Bodley Head
New York: John Lane Company
MCMIX
1908
[Illustration: Edward MacDowell]
TO HENRY T. FINCK
PREFACE
This study is based upon the monograph on MacDowell which I
contributed in 1905 to the "Living Masters of Music" series. That
book could not, of course, remain in the series after the death of
MacDowell three years later; it was therefore taken from its place
and used as a foundation for the present volume, which supersedes it
in every respect. The biographical portion is almost wholly new, and
has been greatly enlarged, while the chapters dealing with
MacDowell's music have been revised and extended.
In completing this survey of one who in his art is still of to-day, I
have been poignantly conscious throughout of the fact that posterity
has an inconvenient habit of reversing the judgments delivered upon
creative artists by their contemporaries; yet to trim deftly one's
convictions in the hope that they may elastically conform to any one
of a number of possible verdicts to be expected from a capricious
futurity, is probably as dangerous a proceeding as to avow, without
equivocation or compromise, one's precise beliefs. It will therefore
be understood that the critical estimates which are offered in the
following pages have been set down with deliberation.
I desire to acknowledge gratefully the assistance which I have
received from various sources: Primarily, from Mrs. Edward MacDowell,
who has rendered help of an indispensable kind; from Mr. Henry T.
Finck, who furnished me with his views and recollections of MacDowell
as a pianist; and from reminiscences and impressions contributed by
Mr. W.H. Humiston, Miss J.S. Watson, and Mr. T.P. Currier--pupils and
friends of MacDowell--to _The Musician_, and by Mr. William Armstrong
to _The Etude_, parts of which I have been privileged to quote.
MacDowell wrote surprisingly few letters, and comparatively little of
his correspondence is of intrinsic or general interest. I am indebted
to Mr. N.J. Corey for permission to quote from several in his
possession; while for the use of letters written to MacDowell and his
wife by Liszt and Grieg my thanks are due to Mrs. MacDowell.
L.G.
DIXVILLE NOTCH, NEW HAMPSHIRE,
September 18, 1908.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
THE MAN
I RECORDS AND EVENTS
II PERSONAL TRAITS AND VIEWS
THE MUSIC-MAKER
III HIS ART AND ITS METHODS
IV EARLY EXPERIMENTS
V A MATURED IMPRESSIONIST
VI THE SONATAS
VII THE SONGS
VIII SUMMARY
LIST OF WORKS
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE NO.
I EDWARD MACDOWELL (Frontispiece)
II MACDOWELL AT FOURTEEN
From a sketch drawn by himself
III MACDOWELL AT EIGHTEEN, AS A MEMBER OF RAFF'S CLASS AT THE
FRANKFORT CONSERVATORY
IV A SKETCH OF LISZT BY MACDOWELL, DRAWN IN 1883
V FACSIMILE OF A LETTER FROM LISZT TO MACDOWELL
VI A LETTER FROM LISZT TO MACDOWELL ACCEPTING THE DEDICATION OF
THE FIRST PIANO CONCERTO
VII MACDOWELL AND TEMPLETON STRONG
From a photograph taken at Wiesbaden in 1888
VIII MACDOWELL IN 1892
IX FACSIMILE OF A LETTER FROM GRIEG TO MACDOWELL, ACCEPTING THE
DEDICATION OF THE "NORSE" SONATA. ONE OF GRIEG'S RARE ATTEMPTS
AT ENGLISH COMPOSITION
X THE HOUSE AT PETERBORO, NEW HAMPSHIRE, WHERE MACDOWELL SPENT
HIS SUMMERS
XI THE PIAZZA AND GARDEN WALK AT PETERBORO
XII A WINTER VIEW OF THE PETERBORO HOUSE
XIII THE "HOUSE OF DREAMS UNTOLD"--THE LOG CABIN IN THE WOODS AT
PETERBORO WHERE MACDOWELL COMPOSED, AND WHERE MOST OF HIS
LATER MUSIC WAS WRITTEN
XIV FACSIMILE OF A PORTION OF THE MS. OF THE "SONATA TRAGICA"
XV FACSIMILE OF A PASSAGE FROM THE ORIGINAL MS. OF THE "KELTIC"
SONATA
XVI THE MUSIC-ROOM AT PETERBORO
... we grow immortal,
And that ... harp awakens of itself
To cry aloud to the grey birds; and dreams,
That have had dreams for fathers, live in us.
--_The Shadowy Waters._
THE MAN
CHAPTER I
RECORDS AND EVENTS
Edward MacDowell, the first Celtic voice that has spoken commandingly
out of musical art, achieved that priority through natural if not
inevitable processes. Both his grandfather and grandmother on his
father's side were born in Ireland, of Irish-Scotch parents. To his
paternal great-grandfather, Alexander MacDowell, the composer traced
the Scottish element in his blood; his paternal great-grandmother,
whose maiden name was Ann McMurran, was born near Belfast, Ireland.
Their son, Alexander, born in Belfast, came to America early in the
last century and settled in New York, where he married a countrywoman,
Sarah Thompson, whom he met after his arrival in the New World. A son,
Thomas (Edward's father), was born to them in New York--where, until
his retirement some time ago, he was engaged in business for many
years. He married in 1856 Frances M. Knapp, a young American woman of
English antecedents. Five years later, on December 18, 1861, their
third son, Edward Alexander (he discarded the middle name toward the
end of his life), was born at 220 Clinton Street, New York--a
neighbourhood which has since suffered the deterioration common to
many of what were once among the town's most irreproachable
residential districts.
From his father, a man of genuine aesthetic instincts, Edward derived
his artistic tendencies and his Celtic sensitiveness of temperament,
together with the pictorial instinct which was later to compete with
his musical ability for decisive recognition; for the elder MacDowell
displayed in his youth a facility as painter and draughtsman which his
parents, who were Quakers of a devout and sufficiently uncompromising
order, discouraged in no uncertain terms. The exercise of his own gift
being thus restrained, Thomas MacDowell passed it on to his younger
son--a somewhat superfluous endowment, in view of the fact that the
latter was to demonstrate so ample a gift for an equally effective
medium of expression.
[Illustration: MACDOWELL AT FOURTEEN
(From a Sketch drawn by Himself)]
Edward had his first piano lessons, when he was about eight years
old, from a friend of the family, Mr. Juan Buitrago, a native of
Bogota, Colombia, and an accomplished musician. Mr. Buitrago was
greatly interested in the boy, and had asked to be permitted to teach
him his notes. Their piano practice at this time was subject to
frequent interruptions; for when strict supervision was not exercised
over his work, Edward was prone to indulge at the keyboard a fondness
for composition which had developed concurrently with, and somewhat
at the expense of, his proficiency in piano technique. He was not a
prodigy, nor was he in the least precocious, though his gifts were as
evident as they were various. He was not fond of drudgery at the
keyboard, and he lacked the miraculous aptness at acquirement which
belongs to the true prodigy. He was unusual chiefly by reason of the
versatility of his gifts. His juvenile exercises in composition were
varied by an apt use of the pencil and the sketching board. He liked
to cover his music books and his exercises with drawings that showed
both the observing eye and the naturally skilful hand of the born
artist. Nor did music and drawing form a sufficient outlet for his
impulse toward expression. He scribbled a good deal in prose and
verse, and was fond of devising fairy tales, which were written not
without a hint of the imaginative faculty which seems always to have
been his possession.
He continued his lessons with Mr. Buitrago for several years, when he
was taken to a professional piano teacher, Paul Desvernine, with whom
he studied until he was fifteen. He received, too, at this time,
occasional supplementary lessons from the brilliant Venezuelan,
Teresa Carreno. When he was in his fifteenth year it was determined
that he should go abroad for a course in piano and theory at the
Paris Conservatory, and in April, 1876, accompanied by his mother, he
left America for France. He passed the competitive examination for
admission to the Conservatory, and began the Autumn term as a pupil
of Marmontel in piano and of Savard in theory and composition--having
for a fellow pupil, by the way, that most remarkable of contemporary
music-makers, Claude Debussy, whom MacDowell described as having
been, even then, a youth of erratic and non-conformist tendencies.
MacDowell's experiences at the Conservatory were not unmixed with
perplexities and embarrassment. His knowledge of French was far from
secure, and he had considerable difficulty in following Savard's
lectures. It was decided, therefore, that he should have a course of
tuition in the language. A teacher was engaged, and Edward began a
resolute attack upon the linguistic _chevaux de frise_ which had
proved so troublesome an impediment--a move which brought him,
unexpectedly enough, to an important crisis in his affairs.
On one occasion it happened that, during these lessons in French, he
was varying the monotony of a study hour by drawing, under cover of
his lesson-book, a portrait of his teacher, whose most striking
physical characteristic was a nose of extravagant bulk. He was
detected just as he was completing the sketch, and was asked, much to
his confusion, to exhibit the result. It appears to have been a
remarkable piece of work as well as an excellent likeness, for the
subject of it was eager to know whether or not MacDowell had studied
drawing, and, if not, how he acquired his proficiency. Moreover, he
insisted on keeping the sketch. Not long after, he called upon Mrs.
MacDowell and told her, to her astonishment, that he had shown the
sketch to a certain very eminent painter--an instructor at the Ecole
de Beaux Arts--and that the painter had been so much impressed by the
talent which it evidenced that he begged to propose to Mrs. MacDowell
that she submit her son to him for a three-years' course of free
instruction under his personal supervision, offering also to be
responsible for his support during that time. The issue was a
momentous one, and Mrs. MacDowell, in much perplexity of mind as to
the wisest settlement of her son's future, laid the matter before
Marmontel, who, fearful of losing one of his aptest pupils, urgently
advised her against diverting her son from a musical career. The
decision was finally left to MacDowell, and it was agreed that he
should continue his studies at the Conservatory. Although it seems
not unlikely that, with his natural facility as a painter and
draughtsman and his uncommon faculties of vision and imagination, he
would have achieved distinction as a painter, it may be questioned
whether in that case music would not have lost appreciably more than
art would have gained.
Conditions at the Conservatory were not to the taste of MacDowell,
for he found his notions of right artistic procedure frequently
opposed to those that prevailed among his teachers and fellow
students. His growing disaffection was brought to a head during the
summer of 1878. It was the year of the Exposition, and MacDowell and
his mother attended a festival concert at which Nicholas Rubinstein
played in memorable style Tchaikovsky's B-flat minor piano concerto.
His performance was a revelation to the young American. "I never can
learn to play like that if I stay here," he said resolutely to his
mother, as they left the concert hall. Mrs. MacDowell, whose fixed
principle it was to permit her son to decide his affairs according to
his lights, thereupon considered with him the merits of various
European Conservatories of reputation. They thought of Moscow,
because of Nicholas Rubinstein's connection with the Conservatory
there. Leipsic suggested itself; Frankfort was strongly recommended,
and Stuttgart seemed to offer conspicuous advantages. The latter
place was finally determined upon, and Mrs. MacDowell and her son
went there from Paris at Thanksgiving time, having agreed that the
famous Stuttgart Conservatory would yield the desired sort of
instruction.
The choice was scarcely a happy one. It did not take MacDowell long
to realise that, if he expected to conform to the Stuttgart
requirements, he would be compelled to unlearn all that he had
already acquired--would have virtually, so far as his technique was
concerned, to begin _de novo_. Rubinstein himself, MacDowell was told
by one of the students, would have had to reform his pianistic
manners if he had placed himself under the guidance of the Stuttgart
pedagogues. Nor does the system of instruction then in effect at the
Conservatory appear to have been thorough even within its own sphere.
MacDowell used to tell of a student who could play an ascending scale
superlatively well, but who was helpless before the problem of
playing the same scale in its descending form.
His mother, disheartened over the failure of Stuttgart to justify her
expectations, was at a loss how best to solve the problem of her
son's immediate future. Having heard much of the ability of Carl
Heymann, the pianist, as an instructor, Mrs. MacDowell thought of the
Frankfort Conservatory, of which Joachim Raff was the head, and where
Heymann would be available as a teacher.
She learned from a friend, to whom she had written for advice, that
the pianist had promised soon to visit her at her home in Wiesbaden,
and it was suggested that the MacDowells pay her a visit at the same
time, and thus benefit by the opportunity of becoming acquainted with
Heymann. Mrs. MacDowell and her son were not slow to avail themselves
of this proposal, and the end of the year 1878 found them in
Wiesbaden. Here they met Heymann, who had just concluded a
triumphantly successful _tournee_ of the European capitals. They
heard him play, and were impressed by his mastery and poetic feeling.
Heymann was not, however, to begin teaching at the Frankfort
Conservatory until the following autumn, so MacDowell remained in
Wiesbaden, studying composition and theory with the distinguished
critic and teacher, Louis Ehlert, while his mother returned to
America.
[Illustration: MACDOWELL AT EIGHTEEN (THE FIGURE AT THE EXTREME LEFT
OF THE GROUP) AS A MEMBER OF RAFF'S CLASS AT THE FRANKFORT
CONSERVATORY]
"Ehlert," MacDowell has written, "was very kind to me, and when I
asked him for 'lessons' he refused flatly, but said he would be glad
for us to 'study together,' as he put it. This rather staggered me,
as my idea in leaving Paris was to get a severe and regenerating
overhauling. I worked hard all winter, however, and heard lots of new
music at the _Cur Haus_, which was like manna in the desert after my
long French famine. Ehlert, who thought that Heymann was not the man
for me, spoke and wrote to Von Bulow about me; but the latter,
without even having seen me, wrote Ehlert a most insulting letter,
asking how Ehlert dared 'to propose such a silly thing' to him; that
he was not a music teacher, and could not waste his time on an
American boy, anyway. So, after all, I went to Frankfort and entered
the conservatory." MacDowell's first interview with Raff, in the
autumn of 1879, was, as he relates, "not promising." "Heymann took me
to him and told him, among other things, that, having studied for
several years the 'French School' of composition, I wished to study
in Germany. Raff immediately flared up and declared that there was no
such thing nowadays as 'schools'--that music was eclectic nowadays;
that if some French writers wrote flimsy music it arose simply from
flimsy attainments, and such stuff could never form a 'school.'
German and other writers were to be criticised from the same
standpoint--their music was bad, middling, or good; but there was no
such thing as cramping it into 'schools' nowadays, when all national
musical traits were common property."
MacDowell remained in the Conservatory for two years, studying
composition with Raff and piano with Heymann. His stay there was
eminently satisfactory and profitable to himself. He found both Raff
and Heymann artistic mentors of an inspiring kind; in Raff,
particularly, he encountered a most sympathetic and encouraging
preceptor, and an influence at once potent and engrossing--a force
which was to direct the currents of his own temperament into definite
artistic channels.
For Heymann as a pianist MacDowell had a fervent admiration. He spoke
of him as "a marvel," whose technique "seemed mysteriously capable of
anything." "When I went to him," MacDowell has said, "I had already
transposed most of the fugues and preludes of Bach (Paris ideas of
'thoroughness'!) and had gone through much rough technical work.
Heymann let me do what I wanted; but in hearing him practise and play
I learned more in a week than I ever had before." When Heymann, who
had already begun to show symptoms of the mental disorder which
ultimately overcame him, left the Conservatory in 1881, he
recommended MacDowell as his successor--a proposal which was
cordially seconded by Raff. But there were antagonistic influences at
work within the Conservatory. MacDowell's candidacy was opposed by
certain of the professors, on account, it was said, of his "youth";
but also, doubtless, because of the advocacy of Heymann, who was not
popular with his colleagues; for he dared, MacDowell has said, "to
play the classics as if they had been written by men with blood in
their veins." So MacDowell failed to get the appointment. He
continued, unofficially, as a pupil of Heymann, and went to him
constantly for criticism and advice.
MacDowell began at this time to take private pupils, and one of these
pupils, an American, Miss Marian Nevins, was later to become his
wife. He was then living in lodgings kept by a venerable German
spinster who was the daughter of one of Napoleon's officers. She was
very fond of her young lodger, and through her he became acquainted
with the work of Erckmann-Chartrian, whose tales deeply engrossed him
at this time. Later he moved to the Cafe Milani, on the Zeil, at that
time an institution of considerable celebrity. As a teacher he made a
rather prominent place for himself; the recommendation of Raff--who
had said to one of MacDowell's pupils that he expected "great things"
of him--had helped at the start, and his personality counted for not
a little. His appearance at this time (he was then nineteen years
old) is described as having been strikingly unlike that of the
typical American as known in Germany. "His keen and very blue eyes,
his pink and white skin, reddish mustache and imperial and jet black
hair, brushed straight up in the prevalent German fashion, caused him
to be known as 'the handsome American.'" Teaching at that time must
have been a sore trial to him. He was, as he continued to be
throughout his life, painfully shy; yet he seems, strangely enough,
to have had, even then, the knack for imparting instruction, for
quickening the interest and stimulating the enthusiasm of those who
came under his guidance, which in later years made him so remarkable
a teacher.
In 1881 MacDowell applied for the vacant position of head piano
teacher at the Conservatory in the neighbouring town of Darmstadt,
and was engaged. He found it an arduous and not too profitable post.
He has described it as "a dreary town, where the pupils studied music
with true German placidity." They procured all their music from a
circulating library, where the choice of novelties was limited to
late editions of the classics and a good deal of sheer trash, poor
dance music and the like. His work, which was unmitigated drudgery,
consumed forty hours a week. For a time he took up his quarters in
Darmstadt; but he missed the attractions of Frankfort; so throughout
his term he travelled on the railroad twice daily between the two
towns. In addition to his regular work at the Conservatory, he
undertook private lessons, going by train once a week to the
Erbach-Fuerstenau castle at Erbach-Fuerstenau, a wearisome three-hour
journey. The castle was a mediaeval _Schloss_, with a drawbridge and
moat. There his pupils were little counts and countesses,
discouragingly dull and sleepy children who spoke only German and
Latin, and who had the smallest interest in music. MacDowell gave
them lessons in harmony as well as piano-playing, and one day, in the
middle of an elaborately simplified exposition of some rudimentary
point, he heard a gentle noise, looked around from the piano, and
discovered his noble young pupils with their heads on their arms,
fast asleep. MacDowell could never remember their different titles,
and ended by addressing them simply as "mademoiselle" and "monsieur,"
to the annoyance of the stern and ceremonious old chatelaine, the
Baroness of Rodenberg.
The twelve hours a week which he spent in railway travelling were
not, though, wholly unprofitable, for he was able to compose on the
train the greater part of his second "Modern Suite" for piano (op.
14). This was the second of his compositions which he considered
worthy of preservation, its predecessor being the "First Modern
Suite," written the year before in Frankfort. Much other music had
already found its way upon paper, had been tried in the unsparing
fire of his criticism, which was even then vigorous and searching,
and had been marked for destruction--a symphony, among other efforts.
His reading at this time was of engrossing interest to him. He was
absorbed in the German poets; Goethe and Heine, whom he was now able
to read with ease in the original German, he knew by heart--a
devotion which was to find expression a few years later in his
"Idyls" and "Poems" (op. 28 and 31). He had begun also to read the
English poets. He devoured Byron and Shelley; and in Tennyson's
"Idyls of the King" he found the spark which kindled his especial
love for mediaeval lore and poetry. Yet while he was enamored of the
imaginative records of the Middle Ages, he had little interest, oddly
enough, in their tangible remains. He liked, for example, to summon a
vision of the valley of the Rhone, with its slow-moving human streams
flowing between Italy and the North, and with Sion still looking down
from its heights, where the bishops had been lords rather than
priests. But this was for him a purely imaginative enchantment. He
cared little about exploring the actual and visible memorials of the
past: to confront them as crumbling ruins gave him no pleasure, and,
as he used to say, he "hated the smells." It was this instinct which,
in his visits to the cathedrals, prompted him to stand as far back as
possible while the Mass was being said. To see in the dim distance
the white, pontifical figures moving gravely through the ritual, to
hear the low tones, enthralled and stirred him; but he shrank from
entering the sacristy, with its loud-voiced priests describing
perfunctorily the relics: that was a disillusionment not to be borne
with.
[Illustration: A SKETCH OF LISZT BY MACDOWELL DRAWN IN 1883]
Having found that his labours at Darmstadt were telling upon his
health, MacDowell resigned his position there and returned to
Frankfort. Here he divided his time between his private teaching and
his composition. He was ambitious also to secure some profitable
concert engagements as a pianist. He had made occasional appearances
at orchestral concerts in Wiesbaden, Frankfort, Darmstadt, but these
had yielded him no return save an increase of reputation.
At Raff's instigation he visited Liszt at Weimar in the spring of
1882, armed with his first piano concerto (op. 15). This work he had
just composed under amusing circumstances. One day while he was
sitting aimlessly before his piano there came a knock at his door,
and in walked, to his startled confusion, his master, Raff, of whom
MacDowell stood in unmitigated awe. "The honor," he relates, "simply
overwhelmed me. He looked rather quizzically around at my untidy
room, and said something about the English translation of his
_Welt-Ende_ oratorio (I found out after, alas, that he had wanted me
to copy it in his score for him; but with his inexplicable shyness he
only hinted at it, and I on my side was too utterly and idiotically
overpowered to catch his meaning); then he abruptly asked me what I
had been writing. I, scarcely realising what I was saying, stammered
out that I had a concerto. He walked out on the landing and turned
back, telling me to bring it to him the next Sunday. In desperation,
not having the remotest idea how I was to accomplish such a task, I
worked like a beaver, evolving the music from some ideas upon which I
had planned at some time to base a concerto. Sunday came, and I had
only the first movement composed. I wrote him a note making some
wretched excuse, and he put it off until the Sunday after. Something
happened then, and he put it off two days more; by that time I had
the concerto ready." Except for three lines of passage work in the
first part, the concerto remains to-day precisely as MacDowell
finished it then.
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