MacDowell Woodland Sketches and New England Idylls

Woodland Sketches and New England Idylls

Edward MacDowell (1860-1908)

As recently as the early 1950s Edward MacDowell continued to hold a firm position as the first universally acclaimed American composer of concert music, witnessed by the popularity of his Second Piano Concerto, the long-lasting impact of the MacDowell Colony on American artistic life, and the continued popularity of a handful of fairly easy, charming piano pieces as teaching material for generations of young piano students. MacDowell’s widow lived into the mid-20t^h century, a passionate advocate for her husband’s works, who the writer of these notes can remember hearing on the radio even in her nineties.

(In those far-off days, like so many youngsters, he was learning to play “To a Wild Rose, ” a piece much loved by lady piano teachers.) Today MacDowell’s reputation is no longer one of supremacy, for we are increasingly aware of the work of his contemporaries, especially such New Englanders as John Knowles Paine, Arthur Foote, George Whitefield Chadwick and (most fascinating of all), Amy Cheney Beach.

These composers have enjoyed a remarkable revival in the last couple decades, revealing a surprising range and depth in their work that long was obscured by MacDowell. Interestingly, this development comes at the point when that unique late-Victorian figure Charles Ives has has won a permanent position in American music history.

Yet MacDowell did not achieve his remarkable popularity and fame by a fluke. Like almost every American composer of his day (except for Amy Beach and Ives), MacDowell studied in Europe as a young man, at first in Paris. After disillusionment with frivolous French musical life, he went on to Germany, completing his studies, winning fame as a brilliant pianist, gifted teacher and composer. He played for Liszt, who himself played through and praised MacDowell’s First Piano Concerto, and was encouraged to compose a Second Piano Concerto, to this day his most widely performed work. He married a young American pianist, Marian Nevins, and in 1888 returned to America, first to Boston, then in 1896 back to his native city, New York, where be became the first professor of music at Columbia University. A rich succession of solo piano works, orchestral tone poems and songs characterise MacDowell’s activities in the 1890s. The highwater mark of his American career may have come with the premiere in 1896 of his “Indian Suite” by the Boston Symphony, a work which was long popular, now very much faded from view.

Early in the new century MacDowell’s career began to unravel, beginning with a highly publicised clash with the imperious president of Columbia University which led to his resignation. In 1904 he was run over by a hansom cab, and signs of mental instability began to appear. The last four years of his life were a terrible period of mental deterioration, and withdrawal from artistic activity.

The selections from MacDowell’s two most famous sets of piano pieces to be heard in tonight’s concert have been orchestrated for the occasion by Carson Rothrock. The titles are redolent of the late Victorian age, which a few years ago tended to be regarded with condescension---with images of a romanticized past, memories of childhood, exuding an atmosphere of gentle, wistful melancholy. But as this tough-minded, rather brutal 20^th century comes to an end, we are beginning to regain an appreciation for the Victorian age, and may be prepared to accept MacDowell’s visions without ironic smiles. The titles of theWoodland Sketches include: “To a Wild Rose, ” “Will o’ the Wisp, ” “At an Old Trysting Place, ” “In Autumn, ” and “From an Indian Lodge.”

The New England Idylls include “An Old Garden, ” “Midsummer, ” “Midwinter, ” “With Sweet Lavender, ” “In Deep Woods, ” “Indian Idyll, ” “To an Old White Pine, ” and “From Puritan Days.” Anyone familiar with the poetry of Whittier or Longfellow will immediately recognise the aesthetic world from which these pieces emerge.

It is perhaps worth taking note of a current [recent???] exhibition of the paintings of Edward Hicks by the Historical Association of Newton. Although Hicks’ work was created much earlier than the Victorian Age, a painting such as his wonderful “Peaceable Kingdom, ” is an early reflection of images and visionary themes running through American art, some of which may find resonance in the work of MacDowell.

NCO Concert