ersen's lore. Two concertos for piano and orchestra are dazzling
feats of virtuosity; one of them is reviewed at length in A.J.
Goodrich' book, "Musical Analysis." He has written also a book of
artistic moment called "Twelve Virtuoso-Studies," and two books of
actual gymnastics for piano practice.

[Music: CLAIR DE LUNE.

La lune etait sereine et jouait sur les flots.
La fenetre enfin libre est ouverte a la brise;
La sultane regarde, et la mer qui se brise,
La-bas, d'un flot d'argent brode les noir ilots.
(Victor Hugo, "Les Orientales.")

E.A. MACDOWELL, Op. 37, No. 1.

Copyright, 1889, Arthur P. Schmidt.]

But MacDowell did not reach his freedom without a struggle against
academia. His opus 10 is a piano suite published at the age of
twenty-two, and opus 14 is another; both contain such obsolescences as
a presto, fugue, scherzino, and the like. But for all the classic
garb, the hands are the hands of Esau. In one of the pieces there is
even a motto tucked, "All hope leave ye behind who enter here!" Can he
have referred to the limbo of classicism?

It is a far cry from these to the liberality that inspired the new
impressionism of "Woodland Sketches" (op. 51) and "Sea Pieces" (op.
55), in which he gives a legitimate musical presentation of a faintly
perfumed "Wild Rose" or "Water Lily," but goes farther, and paints,
with wonderful tone, the moods inspired by reverie upon the uncouth
dignity and stoic savagery of "An Indian Lodge," the lonely New
England twilight of "A Deserted Farm," and all the changing humors of
the sea, majesty of sunset or star-rise, and even the lucent emerald
of an iceberg. His "From Uncle Remus" is not so successful; indeed,
MacDowell is not sympathetic with negro music, and thinks that if we
are to found a national school on some local manner, we should find
the Indian more congenial than the lazy, sensual slave.

He has carried this belief into action, not only by his scientific
interest in the collection and compilation of the folk-music of our
prairies, but by his artistic use of actual Indian themes in one of
his most important works, his "Indian Suite" for full orchestra, a
work that has been often performed, and always with the effect of a
new and profound sensation, particularly in the case of the deeply
impressive dirge.

A proof of the success of MacDowell as a writer in the large forms is
the fact that practically all of his orchestral works