Edward MacDowell Part 5

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 a.s.sumes 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_ pa.s.sage 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 ma.n.u.script, 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 Schone Alda," 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 Schone Alda," is, however, a more memorable work, depicting the loveliness and the grieving of Alda, 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 ill.u.s.tration 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

"... schone, kranke Frau, Zartdurchsichtig und marmorbla.s.s,"

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 kuhle 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 ill.u.s.tration to Tennyson's poem, "The Eagle." The three other numbers of this opus, "The Brook," "Moons.h.i.+ne," and "Winter," one can praise only in measured terms--although "Winter,"

which attempts a representation of the "widow bird" and frozen landscape of Sh.e.l.ley'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 surpa.s.s it in fitness, concision, and felicity. It displays a power of imaginative trans.m.u.tation 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 s.p.a.ces, 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 una.s.sailable 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 craftsmans.h.i.+p and ripe and heedful artistry. The observer will notice in these pieces, incidentally, the abandonment of the traditional Italian terms of expression and the subst.i.tution 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 st.u.r.dy 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 t.i.tles--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 craftsmans.h.i.+p; but it lacks persuasion--lacks, to put it baldly, inspiration.

Pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sured and confident master of musical impressionism and the possessor of a matured and fully individualised style.

CHAPTER V

A MATURED IMPRESSIONIST

With the completion and production of his "Indian" suite for orchestra (op. 48) MacDowell came, in a measure, into his own. Mr. Philip Hale, writing apropos of a performance of the suite at a concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra[12] in December, 1897, did not hesitate to describe the work as "one of the n.o.blest compositions of modern times." Elsewhere he wrote concerning it: "The thoughts are the musical thoughts of high imagination; the expression is that of the sure and serene master. There are here no echoes of Raff, or Wagner, or Brahms, men that have each influenced mightily the musical thought of to-day. There is the voice of one composer: a virile, tender voice that does not stammer, does not break, does not wax hysterical: the voice of a composer that not only must pour out that which has acc.u.mulated within him, but knows all the resources of musical oratory--in a word, the voice of MacDowell."

[12] The suite is dedicated to this Orchestra and its former conductor, Mr. Emil Paur.

MacDowell has derived the greater part of the thematic substance of the suite, as he acknowledges in a prefatory note, from melodies of the North American Indians, with the exception of a few subsidiary themes of his own invention. "If separate t.i.tles for the different movements are desired," he says in his note, "they should be arranged as follows: I. 'Legend'; II. 'Love Song'; III. 'In War-time'; IV.

'Dirge'; V. Village Festival'"--a concession in which again one traces a hint of the inexplicable and amusing reluctance of the musical impressionist to acknowledge without reservation the programmatic basis of his work. In the case of the "Indian" suite, however, the intention is clear enough, even without the proffered t.i.tles; for the several movements are unmistakably based upon firmly held concepts of a definite dramatic and emotional significance. As supplemental aids to the discovery of his poetic purposes, the phrases of direction which he has placed at the beginning of each movement are indicative, taken in connection with the t.i.tles which he sanctions. The first movement, "Legend," is headed: _Not fast. With much dignity and character_; the second movement, "Love Song," is to be played _Not fast. Tenderly_; the third movement, "In War-time," is marked: _With rough vigour, almost savagely_; the fourth, "Dirge": _Dirge-like, mournfully_; the fifth, "Village Festival": _Swift and light_.

Here, certainly, is food for the imagination, the frankest of invitations to the impressionable listener. There is no reason to believe that the music is built throughout upon such a detailed and specific plan as underlies, for example, the "Lancelot and Elaine"; the notable fact is that MacDowell has attained in this work to a power and weight of utterance, an eloquence of communication, a ripeness of style, and a security and strength of workmans.h.i.+p, which he had not hitherto brought to the fulfilment of an avowedly impressionistic scheme.[13] He has exposed the particular emotions and the essential character of his subject with deep sympathy and extraordinary imaginative force--at times with profoundly impressive effect, as in the first movement, "Legend," and the third, "In War-Time"; and in the overwhelmingly poignant "Dirge" he has achieved the most profoundly affecting threnody in music since the "Gotterdammerung" _Trauermarsch_. I am inclined to rank this movement, with the sonatas and one or two of the "Woodland Sketches" and "Sea Pieces," as the choicest emanation of MacDowell's genius; and of these it is, I think, the most inspired and the most deeply felt. The extreme pathos of the opening section, with the wailing phrase in the muted strings under the reiterated G of the flutes (an inverted organ-point of sixteen _adagio_ measures); the indescribable effect of the muted horn heard from behind the scenes, over an accompaniment of divided violas and 'cellos _con sordini_; the heart-shaking sadness and beauty of the succeeding pa.s.sage for all the muted strings; the mysterious and solemn close: these are outstanding moments in a masterpiece of the first rank: a page which would honour any music-maker, living or dead.

[13] The "Tragica" sonata, op. 45, which antedates the suite by several years, and of which I shall write in another chapter, has a considerably less definite content.

In the suite as a whole he has caught and embodied the fundamental spirit of his theme: these are the sorrows and laments and rejoicings, not of our own day and people, but of the vanished life of an elemental and dying race; here is the solitude of dark forests, of illimitable and lonely prairies, and the sombreness and wildness of one knows not what grim tragedies and romances and festivities enacted in the shadow of a fading past.

Into the discussion of the relation between such works as the "Indian"

suite and the establishment of a possible "American" school of music I shall not intrude. To those of us who believe that such a "school,"

whether desirable or not, can never be created through conscious effort, and who are entirely willing to permit time and circ.u.mstance to bring about its establishment, the subject is as wearisome as it is unprofitable. The logic of the belief that it is possible to achieve a representative nationalism in music by the ingenuous process of adopting the idiom of an alien though neighbouring race is not immediately apparent; and although MacDowell in this suite has admittedly derived his basic material from the North American aborigines, he never, so far as I am aware, claimed that his impressive and n.o.ble score const.i.tutes, for that reason, a representatively national utterance. He perceived, doubtless, that territorial propinquity is quite a different thing from racial affinity; and that a musical art derived from either Indian or Ethiopian sources can be "American" only in a partial and quite unimportant sense. He recognised, and he affirmed the belief, that racial elements are transitory and mutable, and that provinciality in art, even when it is called patriotism, makes for a probable oblivion.

I have already dwelt upon MacDowell's preoccupation with the pageant of the natural world. If one is tempted, at times, to praise in him the celebrant of the "mystery and the majesty of earth" somewhat at the expense of the musical humanist, it is because he has in an uncommon degree the intimate visualising faculty of the essential Celt. "In all my work," he avowed a few years before his death, "there is the Celtic influence. I love its colour and meaning. The development in music of that influence is, I believe, a new field."

That it was a note which he was pre-eminently qualified to strike and sustain is beyond doubt: and, as he seems to have realised, he had the field to himself. He is, strangely enough, the first Celtic influence of genuine vitality and importance which has been exerted upon creative music--a singular but incontestable fact. As it is exerted by him it has an exquisite authenticity. Again and again one is aware that the "sheer, inimitable Celtic note," which we have long known how to recognise in another art, is being sounded in the music of this composer who has in his heart and brain so much of "the wisdom of old romance." With him one realises that "natural magic" is, as Mr. Yeats has somewhere said, "but the ancient wors.h.i.+p of Nature and that troubled ecstasy before her, that certainty of all beautiful places being haunted, which is brought into men's minds." We have observed the operation of this impulse in such comparatively immature productions as the "Wald-Idyllen" and the "Idyls" after Goethe, in the "Four Little Poems" of op. 32, and in the first orchestral suite; but it is in the much later "Woodland Sketches" and "Sea Pieces," for piano, that the tendency comes to its finest issue.

Music, of course--from Frohberger and Haydn to Mendelssohn, Wagner, Raff, and Debussy--abounds in examples of natural imagery. In claiming a certain excellence for his method one need scarcely imply that MacDowell has ever threatened the supremacy of such things as the "Rheingold" prelude or the "Walkure" fire music. It is as much by reason of his choice of subjects as because of the peculiar vividness and felicity of his expression, that he occupies so single a place among tone-poets of the external world. He has never attempted such vast frescoes as Wagner delighted to paint. Of his descriptive music by far the greater part is written for the piano; so that, at the start, a very definite limitation is imposed upon magnitude of plan.

You cannot suggest on the piano, with any adequacy of effect, a mountain-side in flames, or the prismatic arch of a rainbow, or the towering architecture of cloud forms; so MacDowell has confined himself within the bounds of such canvases as he paints upon in his "Four Little Poems" ("The Eagle," "The Brook," "Moons.h.i.+ne," "Winter"), in his first orchestral suite, and in the inimitable "Woodland Sketches" and "Sea Pieces." Thus his themes are starlight, a water-lily, will o' the wisps, a deserted farm, a wild rose, the sea-spell, deep woods, an old garden. As a fair exemplification of his practice, consider, let me say, his "To a Water-lily," from the "Woodland Sketches." It is difficult to recall anything in objective tone-painting, for the piano or for the orchestra, conceived and executed quite in the manner of this remarkable piece of lyrical impressionism. Of all the composers who have essayed tonal transcriptions of the phases of the outer world, I know of none who has achieved such vividness and suggestiveness of effect with a similar condensation. The form is small; but these pieces are no more justly to be dismissed as mere "miniature work" than is Wordsworth's "Daffodils," which they parallel in delicacy of perception, intensity of vision, and perfection of accomplishment. The question of bulk, length, size, has quite as much pertinence in one case as in the other. In his work in this sort, MacDowell is often as one who, having fallen, through the ignominies of daily life, among the barren makes.h.i.+fts of reality, "remembers the enchanted valleys." It is touched at times with the deep and wistful tenderness, the primaeval nostalgia, which is never very distant from the mood of his writing, and in which, again, one is tempted to trace the essential Celt. It is this close kins.h.i.+p with the secret presences of the natural world, this intimate responsiveness to elemental moods, this quick sensitiveness to the aroma and the magic of places, that sets him recognisably apart.

If in the "Indian" suite MacDowell disclosed the full maturity of his powers of imaginative and structural design, it is in the "Woodland Sketches" (op. 51) that his speech, freed from such inc.u.mbrances as were imposed upon it by his deliberate adoption of an exotic idiom, a.s.sumes for the first time some of its most engaging and distinctive characteristics. Consider, for example, number eight of the group, "A Deserted Farm." Here is the quintessence of his style in one of its most frequent aspects. The manner has a curious simplicity, yet it would be difficult to say in what, precisely, the simplicity consists; it has striking individuality,--yet the particular trait in which it resides is not easily determined. The simplicity is certainly not of the harmonic plan, nor of the melodic outline, which are subtly yet frankly conceived; and the individuality does not lie in any eccentricity or determined novelty of effect. Both the flavour of simplicity and of personality are, one concludes, more a spiritual than an anatomical possession of the music. Its quality is as intangible and pervasive as that dim magic of "unremembering remembrance" that is awakened in some by the troubling tides of spring; it is apparently as unsought for as are the naive utterances of folk-song. It is his unfailing charm, and it is everywhere manifest in his later work: that spontaneity and _insouciance_, that utter absence of self-consciousness, which is in nothing so surprising as in its serene ant.i.thesis to what one has come to accept--too readily, it may be--as the dominant accent of musical modernity.

These pieces have an inescapable fragrance, tenderness, and zest. "To a Wild Rose," "Will o' the Wisp," "In Autumn," "From Uncle Remus," and "By a Meadow Brook" are slight in poetic substance, though executed with charm and humour; but the five other pieces--"At an Old Trysting Place," "From an Indian Lodge," "To a Water-lily," "A Deserted Farm,"

and "Told at Sunset"--are of a different calibre. With the exception of "To a Water-lily," whose quality is uncomplex and unconcealed, these tone-poems in little are a curious blend of what, lacking an apter name, one must call nature-poetry, and psychological suggestion; and they are remarkable for the manner in which they focus great richness of emotion into limited s.p.a.ce. "At an Old Trysting Place,"

"From an Indian Lodge," "A Deserted Farm," and "Told at Sunset," imply a consecutive dramatic purpose which is emphasised by their connection through a hint of thematic community. The element of drama, though, is not insisted upon--indeed, a large portion of the searching charm of these pieces lies in their tactful reticence.

In the "Sea Pieces" of op. 55 a larger impulse is at work. The set comprises eight short pieces, few of them over two pages in length; yet they are modelled upon ample lines, and they have, in a conspicuous degree, that property to which I have alluded--the property of suggesting within a limited framework an emotional or dramatic content of large and far-reaching significance. I spoke in an earlier chapter, in this connection, of the first of these pieces, "To the Sea." I must repeat that this tone-poem seems to me one of the most entirely admirable things in the literature of the piano; and it is typical, in the main, of the volume. MacDowell is one of the comparatively few composers who have been thrall to the spell of the sea; none, I think, has felt that spell more irresistibly or has communicated it with more conquering an eloquence. This music is full of the glamour, the awe, the mystery, of the sea; of its sinister and terrible beauty, but also of its tonic charm, its secret allurement.

Here is sea poetry to match with that of Whitman and Swinburne. The music is drenched in salt-spray, wind-swept, exhilarating. There are pages in it through which rings the thunderous laughter of the sea in its mood of cosmic and terrifying elation, and there are pages through which drift sun-painted mists--mists that both conceal and disclose enchanted vistas and apparitions. There is an exhilaration even in his t.i.tles (which he has supplemented with mottos): as "To the Sea," "From a Wandering Iceberg," "Starlight," "From the Depths," "In Mid-Ocean."

I make no concealment of my unqualified admiration for these pieces: with the sonatas, the "Dirge" from the "Indian" suite, and certain of the "Woodland Sketches," they record, I think, his high-water mark. He has carried them through with superb gusto, with unwearying imaginative fervour. In "To the Sea," "From the Depths," and "In Mid-Ocean," it is the sea of Whitman's magnificent apostrophe that he celebrates--the sea of

"brooding scowl and murk,"

of

"unloosed hurricanes,"

speaking, imperiously,

"with husky-haughty lips";

while elsewhere, as in the "Wandering Iceberg" and "Nautilus" studies, the pervading tone is of Swinburne's

"deep divine dark days.h.i.+ne of the sea."

"Starlight" is of a brooding and solemn tenderness. The "Song" and "A.D. MDCXX." (a memoir of the notorious galleon of the Pilgrims) are in a lighter vein. The tonal plangency, the epic quality, of these studies is extraordinary,--exposing a tendency toward an orchestral fulness and breadth of style that will offer a more pertinent theme for comment in a consideration of the sonatas. Their littleness is wholly a quant.i.tative matter; their spiritual and imaginative substance is not only of rare quality, but of striking amplitude.

We come now to the final volumes in the series of what one may as well call pianistic "nature-studies": the "Fireside Tales" (op. 61) and "New England Idyls" (op. 62), which, together with the songs of op.

60, const.i.tute the last of his published works (they were all issued in 1902). In these last piano pieces there is a new quality, an unaccustomed accent. One notes it on the first page of the opening number of the "Fireside Tales," "An Old Love Story," where the voice of the composer seems to have taken on an unfamiliar _timbre_. There is here a turn of phrase, a quality of sentiment, which are notably fresh and strange. There is in this, and in "By Smouldering Embers," a graver tenderness, a more pervasive sobriety, than he had revealed before. Read over the D-flat major section of "An Old Love Story."

Throughout MacDowell's previous work one will find no pa.s.sage quite like it in contour and emotion. It is quieter, more ripely poised, than anything in his earlier manner that I can recall. "Of Br'er Rabbit," "From a German Forest," "Of Salamanders," and "A Haunted House," are in his familiar vein; but again the new note is sounded in the concluding number of the book, "By Smouldering Embers."

In the "New England Idyls," the point is still more evident. One pa.s.ses over "From an Old Garden" and "Midsummer" as belonging fundamentally to the period of the "Woodland Sketches" and "Sea Pieces." But one halts at "Mid-Winter," No. 3 of the collection; with those fifteen bars in E-flat major in the middle section, one enters upon unfamiliar ground in the various and delectable region of MacDowell's fantasy. So in the succeeding piece, "With Sweet Lavender": he had not given us in any of his former writing a theme similar in quality to the one with which he begins the thirteenth bar.

"In Deep Woods" is less unusual--is, in fact, strongly suggestive, in harmonic colour, of the s.h.i.+ning sonorities of the "Wandering Iceberg"

study in the "Sea Pieces." The "Indian Idyl," "To an Old White Pine,"

and "From Puritan Days" are also contrived in the familiar idiom of the earlier volumes, though they are unfailingly resourceful in invention and imaginative vigour. In "From a Log Cabin," though, we come upon as surprising a thing as MacDowell's art had yielded us since the appearance of the "Woodland Sketches." I doubt if, in the entire body of his writing, one will find a lovelier, a more intimate utterance. It bears as a motto the words--strangely prophetic when he wrote them--which are now inscribed on the memorial tablet near his grave:--