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 craftsmanship; but it lacks
persuasion--lacks, to put it baldly, inspiration.

Passing 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 assured 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 noblest 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
accumulated 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 titles for the different
movements are desired," he says in his note, "they should be arranged
as follo