_Edward Alexander MacDowell._

[Illustration: Autograph of Edward MacDowell]

The matter of precedence in creative art is as hopeless of solution as
it is unimportant. And yet it seems appropriate to say, in writing of
E.A. MacDowell, that an almost unanimous vote would grant him rank as
the greatest of American composers, while not a few ballots would
indicate him as the best of living music writers.

But this, to repeat, is not vital, the main thing being that MacDowell
has a distinct and impressive individuality, and uses his profound
scholarship in the pursuit of novelty that is not cheaply sensational,
and is yet novelty. He has, for instance, theories as to the textures
of sounds, and his chord-formations and progressions are quite his
own.

His compositions are superb processions, in which each participant is
got up with the utmost personal splendor. His generalship is great
enough to preserve the unity and the progress of the pageant. With him
no note in the melody is allowed to go neglected, ill-mounted on
common chords in the bass, or cheap-garbed in trite triads. Each tone
is made to suggest something of its multitudinous possibilities.
Through any geometrical point, an infinite number of lines can be
drawn. This is almost the case with any note of a melody. It is the
recognition and the practice of this truth that gives the latter-day
schools of music such a lusciousness and warmth of harmony. No one is
a more earnest student of these effects than MacDowell.

He believes that it is necessary, at this late day, if you would have
a chord "bite," to put a trace of acid in its sweetness. With this
clue in mind, his unusual procedures become more explicable without
losing their charm.

New York is rather the Mecca than the birthplace of artists, but it
can boast the nativity of MacDowell, who improvised his first songs
here December 18, 1861. He began the study of the piano at an early
age. One of his teachers was Mme. Teresa Carreno, to whom he has
dedicated his second concerto for the piano.

In 1876 he went to Paris and entered the Conservatoire, where he
studied theory under Savard, and the piano under Marmontel. He went to
Wiesbaden to study with Ehlert in 1879, and then to Frankfort, where
Carl Heyman taught him piano and Joachim Raff composition. The
influence of Raff is of the utmost importance in MacDowell's music,
and I have been told that the great romancist made a _protege_ of him,
and would