EARLY EXPERIMENTS

MacDowell's impulse toward significant expression was not slow in
declaring itself. The first "modern suite" (op. 10), the earliest of
his listed works, which at first glance seems to be merely a group of
contrasted movements of innocently traditional aspect, with the
expected Praeludium, Presto, Intermezzo, Fugue, etc., contains,
nevertheless, the germ of the programmatic principle; for at the head
of the third movement (Andantino and Allegretto) one comes upon a
motto from Virgil--"Per amica silentia lunae," and the Rhapsodic is
introduced with the

"Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate"

of Dante. The Praeludium of the second piano suite, op. 14, is also
annotated, having been suggested by lines from Byron's "Manfred."
In the "Zwei Fantasiestuecke", op. 17--"Erzaehlung" and "Hexentanz"--but
more particularly in the "Wald-Idyllen" of op. 19--"Waldesstille,"
"Spiel der Nymphen," "Traeumerei," and "Driadentanz,"--a definite
poetic concept is implied. Here the formative influence of Raff is
evident. The works which follow--"Drei Poesien" ("Nachts am Meere,"
"Erzaehlung aus der Ritterzeit," "Ballade"), and the "Mondbilder,"
after Hans Christian Andersen--are of a similar kind. The romanticism
which pervades them is not of a very finely distilled quality: they are
not, that is to say, the product of a clarified and wholly personal
vision--of the vision which prompted the issue of such things as the
"Woodland Sketches," the "Sea Pieces," and the "New England Idyls." In
these earlier works one feels that the romantic view has been assumed
somewhat vicariously--one can imagine the favourite pupil of Raff
producing a group of "Wald-Idyllen" quite as a matter of course, and
without interior conviction. Nor is the style marked by individuality,
except in occasional passages. There are traces of his peculiar
quality in the first suite,--in the 6/8 passage of the Rhapsodie, for
example,--in portions of the first piano concerto (the _a piacere_
passage toward the close of the first movement is particularly
characteristic), in the _Erzaehlung_, and in No. 3 (_Traeumerei_) of the
_Wald-Idyllen_; but the prevailing note of his style at this time was,
quite naturally, strongly Teutonic: one encounters in it the trail of
Liszt, of Schumann, of Raff, of Wagner.

Not until one reaches the "Hamlet and Ophelia" is it apparent that he
is beginning to find himself. This work was written before he had
completed