LIST OF WORKS
COMPOSITIONS OF EDWARD MACDOWELL
WITHOUT OPUS NUMBER
Footnotes:
[1]The "Two Old Songs," which bear an earlier opus number,—9,—were composed at a much later period—a fact which is betrayed by their style.
[2]I give the German titles under which these compositions were originally published.
[3]The published score of this opus bears the title (in German): "Hamlet; Ophelia: Two Poems for Grand Orchestra." But MacDowell afterward changed his mind concerning this designation, and preferred to entitle the work: "First Symphonic Poem (a. 'Hamlet'; b. 'Ophelia')." This alteration is written in MacDowell's handwriting in his copy of the printed score. When "Lancelot and Elaine" was published three years later it bore the sub-title: "Second Symphonic Poem."
[4]The rest of the programme, it may be interesting to note, contained Arthur Foote's overture, "In the Mountains," Van der Stucken's suite, "The Tempest," Chadwick's "Melpomene" overture, Paine's "Oedipus Tyrannus" prelude, a romance and polonaise for violin and orchestra by Henry Holden Huss, and songs by Margaret Ruthven Lang, Dudley Buck, Chadwick, Foote, Van der Stucken. The concert ended with an "ouverture festivale sur l'Hymne Américaine, 'The Star Spangled Banner,'" by Dudley Buck.
[5]This episode formed part of the suite in its original form, but was not printed until several years after the publication of the rest of the music. The earlier portion, comprising four parts ("In a Haunted Forest," "Summer Idyll," "The Shepherdess' Song," "Forest Spirits"), was published in 1891, the supplement in 1893.
[6]A single movement of the "Sonata Tragica," the third, was played by MacDowell in Boston on March 18, 1892, at the last of the three recitals which he gave in that season at Chickering Hall.
[7]The only one of his works of equal calibre which does not, strictly speaking, belong to this period is the set of "Woodland Sketches"; these were composed during the last part of his stay in Boston, and were published in the year (1896) of his removal to New York.
[8]That MacDowell came later to realise the disadvantages, no less than the inconsistency, of writing programme-music based upon a detailed and definite programme and then withholding the programme, is indicated by this passage from a lecture on Beethoven which he delivered at Columbia: "If it [Beethoven's music] is absolute music, according to the accepted meaning of the term, either it must be beautiful music in itself,—that is, composed of beautiful sounds,—or its excuse fornotbeing beautiful must rest upon its power of expressing emotions and ideas that demand other than merely beautiful tones for their utterance. Music, for instance, that would give us the emotion—if I may call it that—of a series of exploding bombshells could hardly be called 'absolute music'; yet that is exactly what the opening of the last movement of the so-called 'Moonlight' Sonata meant to Miss Thackeray, who speaks of it in her story, 'Beauty and the Beast.'... If this is abstract music, it is bad. We know, however, that Beethoven had some poetic idea in his mind as he wrote this; but as he never gave the clew to the world, the music has been swallowed as 'absolute music' by the modern formalists"—a comment which would apply almost word for word, with a change of names and titles, to a certain tumultuous and "unbeautiful" passage in MacDowell's "Lancelot and Elaine." This passage is intended to express the rage and jealousy of Guinevere; but MacDowell has given no indication of this fact in his score, and only occasionally does the information find its way into the programme-books. Yet in his own copy of the score he wrote a complete and detailed key to the significance of the music at every point. Such are the ways of the musical realist!
[9]The revised version, published in 1901, is referred to. The original edition, which appeared in 1888, is decidedly inferior.
[10]From the "Sea Pieces," for piano.
[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.
[12]The suite is dedicated to this Orchestra and its former conductor, Mr. Emil Paur.
[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.
[14]It must be confessed that this qualification is a little difficult to grasp. Is not the sonata dependent for its complete understanding upon a knowledge of its literary basis? MacDowell exhibits here the half-heartedness which I have elsewhere remarked in his attitude toward representative music.
[15]Dedicated, like the "Norse," to Grieg.
[16]No. VII. of the "Eight Songs," op. 47.
[17]Op. 58, No. II.
[18]The publication dates given here are those of the original editions.
[19]Posthumous.
[20]In their original form this set comprised only six pieces. MacDowell afterward revised them extensively, rearranged their order, and added the "Prologue" and "Epilogue." In this altered form they were published in 1901.
[21]As originally published, in 1891, this suite comprised only the first, second, fourth, and fifth movements. The third, "In October," though composed at the same time as the others, and intended for inclusion in the suite, was not published until 1893, when it was issued as a "supplement" under the same opus number.