Edward MacDowell: A Study — Key Ideas to Explore

Edward had his first piano lessons, when he was about eight years old, from a friend of the family, Mr. Juan Buitrago, a native of Bogota, Colombia, and an accomplished musician. Mr. Buitrago was greatly interested in the boy, and had asked to be permitted to teach him his notes. Their piano practice at this time was subject to frequent interruptions; for when strict supervision was not exercised over his work, Edward was prone to indulge at the keyboard a fondness for composition which had developed concurrently with, and somewhat at the expense of, his proficiency in piano technique. He was not a prodigy, nor was he in the least precocious, though his gifts were as evident as they were various. He was not fond of drudgery at the keyboard, and he lacked the miraculous aptness at acquirement which belongs to the true prodigy. He was unusual chiefly by reason of the versatility of his gifts. His juvenile exercises in composition were varied by an apt use of the pencil and the sketching board. He liked to cover his music books and his exercises with drawings that showed both the observing eye and the naturally skilful hand of the born artist. Nor did music and drawing form a sufficient outlet for his impulse toward expression. He scribbled a good deal in prose and verse, and was fond of devising fairy tales, which were written not without a hint of the imaginative faculty which seems always to have been his possession.

He continued his lessons with Mr. Buitrago for several years, when he was taken to a professional piano teacher, Paul Desvernine, with whom he studied until he was fifteen. He received, too, at this time, occasional supplementary lessons from the brilliant Venezuelan, Teresa Carreño. When he was in his fifteenth year it was determined that he should go abroad for a course in piano and theory at the Paris Conservatory, and in April, 1876, accompanied by his mother, he left America for France. He passed the competitive examination for admission to the Conservatory, and began the Autumn term as a pupil of Marmontel in piano and of Savard in theory and composition--having for a fellow pupil, by the way, that most remarkable of contemporary music-makers, Claude Debussy, whom MacDowell described as having been, even then, a youth of erratic and non-conformist tendencies.

MacDowell's experiences at the Conservatory were not unmixed with perplexities and embarrassment. His knowledge of French was far from secure, and he had considerable difficulty in following Savard's lectures. It was decided, therefore, that he should have a course of tuition in the language. A teacher was engaged, and Edward began a resolute attack upon the linguistic _chevaux de frise_ which had proved so troublesome an impediment--a move which brought him, unexpectedly enough, to an important crisis in his affairs.

On one occasion it happened that, during these lessons in French, he was varying the monotony of a study hour by drawing, under cover of his lesson-book, a portrait of his teacher, whose most striking physical characteristic was a nose of extravagant bulk. He was detected just as he was completing the sketch, and was asked, much to his confusion, to exhibit the result. It appears to have been a remarkable piece of work as well as an excellent likeness, for the subject of it was eager to know whether or not MacDowell had studied drawing, and, if not, how he acquired his proficiency. Moreover, he insisted on keeping the sketch. Not long after, he called upon Mrs. MacDowell and told her, to her astonishment, that he had shown the sketch to a certain very eminent painter--an instructor at the École de Beaux Arts--and that the painter had been so much impressed by the talent which it evidenced that he begged to propose to Mrs. MacDowell that she submit her son to him for a three-years' course of free instruction under his personal supervision, offering also to be responsible for his support during that time. The issue was a momentous one, and Mrs. MacDowell, in much perplexity of mind as to the wisest settlement of her son's future, laid the matter before Marmontel, who, fearful of losing one of his aptest pupils, urgently advised her against diverting her son from a musical career. The decision was finally left to MacDowell, and it was agreed that he should continue his studies at the Conservatory. Although it seems not unlikely that, with his natural facility as a painter and draughtsman and his uncommon faculties of vision and imagination, he would have achieved distinction as a painter, it may be questioned whether in that case music would not have lost appreciably more than art would have gained.

Conditions at the Conservatory were not to the taste of MacDowell, for he found his notions of right artistic procedure frequently opposed to those that prevailed among his teachers and fellow students. His growing disaffection was brought to a head during the summer of 1878. It was the year of the Exposition, and MacDowell and his mother attended a festival concert at which Nicholas Rubinstein played in memorable style Tchaikovsky's B-flat minor piano concerto. His performance was a revelation to the young American. "I never can learn to play like that if I stay here," he said resolutely to his mother, as they left the concert hall. Mrs. MacDowell, whose fixed principle it was to permit her son to decide his affairs according to his lights, thereupon considered with him the merits of various European Conservatories of reputation. They thought of Moscow, because of Nicholas Rubinstein's connection with the Conservatory there. Leipsic suggested itself; Frankfort was strongly recommended, and Stuttgart seemed to offer conspicuous advantages. The latter place was finally determined upon, and Mrs. MacDowell and her son went there from Paris at Thanksgiving time, having agreed that the famous Stuttgart Conservatory would yield the desired sort of instruction.

The choice was scarcely a happy one. It did not take MacDowell long to realise that, if he expected to conform to the Stuttgart requirements, he would be compelled to unlearn all that he had already acquired--would have virtually, so far as his technique was concerned, to begin _de novo_. Rubinstein himself, MacDowell was told by one of the students, would have had to reform his pianistic manners if he had placed himself under the guidance of the Stuttgart pedagogues. Nor does the system of instruction then in effect at the Conservatory appear to have been thorough even within its own sphere. MacDowell used to tell of a student who could play an ascending scale superlatively well, but who was helpless before the problem of playing the same scale in its descending form.

His mother, disheartened over the failure of Stuttgart to justify her expectations, was at a loss how best to solve the problem of her son's immediate future. Having heard much of the ability of Carl Heymann, the pianist, as an instructor, Mrs. MacDowell thought of the Frankfort Conservatory, of which Joachim Raff was the head, and where Heymann would be available as a teacher.

She learned from a friend, to whom she had written for advice, that the pianist had promised soon to visit her at her home in Wiesbaden, and it was suggested that the MacDowells pay her a visit at the same time, and thus benefit by the opportunity of becoming acquainted with Heymann. Mrs. MacDowell and her son were not slow to avail themselves of this proposal, and the end of the year 1878 found them in Wiesbaden. Here they met Heymann, who had just concluded a triumphantly successful _tournée_ of the European capitals. They heard him play, and were impressed by his mastery and poetic feeling. Heymann was not, however, to begin teaching at the Frankfort Conservatory until the following autumn, so MacDowell remained in Wiesbaden, studying composition and theory with the distinguished critic and teacher, Louis Ehlert, while his mother returned to America.

"Ehlert," MacDowell has written, "was very kind to me, and when I asked him for 'lessons' he refused flatly, but said he would be glad for us to 'study together,' as he put it. This rather staggered me, as my idea in leaving Paris was to get a severe and regenerating overhauling. I worked hard all winter, however, and heard lots of new music at the _Cur Haus_, which was like manna in the desert after my long French famine. Ehlert, who thought that Heymann was not the man for me, spoke and wrote to Von Bulow about me; but the latter, without even having seen me, wrote Ehlert a most insulting letter, asking how Ehlert dared 'to propose such a silly thing' to him; that he was not a music teacher, and could not waste his time on an American boy, anyway. So, after all, I went to Frankfort and entered the conservatory." MacDowell's first interview with Raff, in the autumn of 1879, was, as he relates, "not promising." "Heymann took me to him and told him, among other things, that, having studied for several years the 'French School' of composition, I wished to study in Germany. Raff immediately flared up and declared that there was no such thing nowadays as 'schools'--that music was eclectic nowadays; that if some French writers wrote flimsy music it arose simply from flimsy attainments, and such stuff could never form a 'school.' German and other writers were to be criticised from the same standpoint--their music was bad, middling, or good; but there was no such thing as cramping it into 'schools' nowadays, when all national musical traits were common property."

MacDowell remained in the Conservatory for two years, studying composition with Raff and piano with Heymann. His stay there was eminently satisfactory and profitable to himself. He found both Raff and Heymann artistic mentors of an inspiring kind; in Raff, particularly, he encountered a most sympathetic and encouraging preceptor, and an influence at once potent and engrossing--a force which was to direct the currents of his own temperament into definite artistic channels.

For Heymann as a pianist MacDowell had a fervent admiration. He spoke of him as "a marvel," whose technique "seemed mysteriously capable of anything." "When I went to him," MacDowell has said, "I had already transposed most of the fugues and preludes of Bach (Paris ideas of 'thoroughness'!) and had gone through much rough technical work. Heymann let me do what I wanted; but in hearing him practise and play I learned more in a week than I ever had before." When Heymann, who had already begun to show symptoms of the mental disorder which ultimately overcame him, left the Conservatory in 1881, he recommended MacDowell as his successor--a proposal which was cordially seconded by Raff. But there were antagonistic influences at work within the Conservatory. MacDowell's candidacy was opposed by certain of the professors, on account, it was said, of his "youth"; but also, doubtless, because of the advocacy of Heymann, who was not popular with his colleagues; for he dared, MacDowell has said, "to play the classics as if they had been written by men with blood in their veins." So MacDowell failed to get the appointment. He continued, unofficially, as a pupil of Heymann, and went to him constantly for criticism and advice.

MacDowell began at this time to take private pupils, and one of these pupils, an American, Miss Marian Nevins, was later to become his wife. He was then living in lodgings kept by a venerable German spinster who was the daughter of one of Napoleon's officers. She was very fond of her young lodger, and through her he became acquainted with the work of Erckmann-Chartrian, whose tales deeply engrossed him at this time. Later he moved to the Café Milani, on the Zeil, at that time an institution of considerable celebrity. As a teacher he made a rather prominent place for himself; the recommendation of Raff--who had said to one of MacDowell's pupils that he expected "great things" of him--had helped at the start, and his personality counted for not a little. His appearance at this time (he was then nineteen years old) is described as having been strikingly unlike that of the typical American as known in Germany. "His keen and very blue eyes, his pink and white skin, reddish mustache and imperial and jet black hair, brushed straight up in the prevalent German fashion, caused him to be known as 'the handsome American.'" Teaching at that time must have been a sore trial to him. He was, as he continued to be throughout his life, painfully shy; yet he seems, strangely enough, to have had, even then, the knack for imparting instruction, for quickening the interest and stimulating the enthusiasm of those who came under his guidance, which in later years made him so remarkable a teacher.

In 1881 MacDowell applied for the vacant position of head piano teacher at the Conservatory in the neighbouring town of Darmstadt, and was engaged. He found it an arduous and not too profitable post. He has described it as "a dreary town, where the pupils studied music with true German placidity." They procured all their music from a circulating library, where the choice of novelties was limited to late editions of the classics and a good deal of sheer trash, poor dance music and the like. His work, which was unmitigated drudgery, consumed forty hours a week. For a time he took up his quarters in Darmstadt; but he missed the attractions of Frankfort; so throughout his term he travelled on the railroad twice daily between the two towns. In addition to his regular work at the Conservatory, he undertook private lessons, going by train once a week to the Erbach-Fürstenau castle at Erbach-Fürstenau, a wearisome three-hour journey. The castle was a mediæval _Schloss_, with a drawbridge and moat. There his pupils were little counts and countesses, discouragingly dull and sleepy children who spoke only German and Latin, and who had the smallest interest in music. MacDowell gave them lessons in harmony as well as piano-playing, and one day, in the middle of an elaborately simplified exposition of some rudimentary point, he heard a gentle noise, looked around from the piano, and discovered his noble young pupils with their heads on their arms, fast asleep. MacDowell could never remember their different titles, and ended by addressing them simply as "mademoiselle" and "monsieur," to the annoyance of the stern and ceremonious old châtelaine, the Baroness of Rodenberg.

The twelve hours a week which he spent in railway travelling were not, though, wholly unprofitable, for he was able to compose on the train the greater part of his second "Modern Suite" for piano (op. 14). This was the second of his compositions which he considered worthy of preservation, its predecessor being the "First Modern Suite," written the year before in Frankfort. Much other music had already found its way upon paper, had been tried in the unsparing fire of his criticism, which was even then vigorous and searching, and had been marked for destruction--a symphony, among other efforts. His reading at this time was of engrossing interest to him. He was absorbed in the German poets; Goethe and Heine, whom he was now able to read with ease in the original German, he knew by heart--a devotion which was to find expression a few years later in his "Idyls" and "Poems" (op. 28 and 31). He had begun also to read the English poets. He devoured Byron and Shelley; and in Tennyson's "Idyls of the King" he found the spark which kindled his especial love for mediæval lore and poetry. Yet while he was enamored of the imaginative records of the Middle Ages, he had little interest, oddly enough, in their tangible remains. He liked, for example, to summon a vision of the valley of the Rhone, with its slow-moving human streams flowing between Italy and the North, and with Sion still looking down from its heights, where the bishops had been lords rather than priests. But this was for him a purely imaginative enchantment. He cared little about exploring the actual and visible memorials of the past: to confront them as crumbling ruins gave him no pleasure, and, as he used to say, he "hated the smells." It was this instinct which, in his visits to the cathedrals, prompted him to stand as far back as possible while the Mass was being said. To see in the dim distance the white, pontifical figures moving gravely through the ritual, to hear the low tones, enthralled and stirred him; but he shrank from entering the sacristy, with its loud-voiced priests describing perfunctorily the relics: that was a disillusionment not to be borne with.

Having found that his labours at Darmstadt were telling upon his health, MacDowell resigned his position there and returned to Frankfort. Here he divided his time between his private teaching and his composition. He was ambitious also to secure some profitable concert engagements as a pianist. He had made occasional appearances at orchestral concerts in Wiesbaden, Frankfort, Darmstadt, but these had yielded him no return save an increase of reputation.

At Raff's instigation he visited Liszt at Weimar in the spring of 1882, armed with his first piano concerto (op. 15). This work he had just composed under amusing circumstances. One day while he was sitting aimlessly before his piano there came a knock at his door, and in walked, to his startled confusion, his master, Raff, of whom MacDowell stood in unmitigated awe. "The honor," he relates, "simply overwhelmed me. He looked rather quizzically around at my untidy room, and said something about the English translation of his _Welt-Ende_ oratorio (I found out after, alas, that he had wanted me to copy it in his score for him; but with his inexplicable shyness he only hinted at it, and I on my side was too utterly and idiotically overpowered to catch his meaning); then he abruptly asked me what I had been writing. I, scarcely realising what I was saying, stammered out that I had a concerto. He walked out on the landing and turned back, telling me to bring it to him the next Sunday. In desperation, not having the remotest idea how I was to accomplish such a task, I worked like a beaver, evolving the music from some ideas upon which I had planned at some time to base a concerto. Sunday came, and I had only the first movement composed. I wrote him a note making some wretched excuse, and he put it off until the Sunday after. Something happened then, and he put it off two days more; by that time I had the concerto ready." Except for three lines of passage work in the first part, the concerto remains to-day precisely as MacDowell finished it then.

In the event, the visit to Liszt, which he had dreaded, was a gratifying surprise. That beneficent but formidable personage received him with kindly courtesy, and had Eugen D'Albert, who was present, play the orchestral part of the concerto which MacDowell had brought with him in manuscript, arranged for two pianos. Liszt listened attentively as the two young musicians played it through,--not too effectively,--and when they had finished he commended it in warm terms. "You must bestir yourself," he warned D'Albert, "if you do not wish to be outdone by our young American"; and he praised the boldness and originality of certain passages in the music, especially their harmonic treatment.

What was at that time even more cheering to MacDowell, who had not yet come to regard himself as paramountly a composer, was Liszt's praise of his piano playing. He returned to Frankfort greatly encouraged, and he was still further elated to receive soon after a letter from Liszt in which, referring to the first "Modern Suite," which MacDowell had sent to him, the Abbé wrote:

"... Since the foundation of the General Society of German Musicians, the definitive making up of the programs is entrusted to me, and I shall be very glad to recommend the execution of your work.

"Will you be good enough to give to your master, my old friend, J. Raff, the assurance of my highest esteem and admiration.

"Budapest. April 13, 1882."