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Updated: May 28, 2025
There MacDowell's interest in the outer world was divided between the British Museum, where he found a particular fascination in the Egyptian and Syrian antiquities, and the Shakespearian performances of Henry Irving and Ellen Terry.
The influential part which Raff bore in turning MacDowell's aims definitely and permanently toward creative rather than pianistic activity could scarcely be overestimated.
I dwell upon this point, not in any spirit of captiousness, I need scarcely say, but because it exemplifies a fairly persistent characteristic of MacDowell's style as a song writer.
What is it I am playing? Someone answered 'Annie Rooney. Facing us with a droll smile, he asked if there was anyone present who could play 'A Hot Time. A dozen boys rushed forward and the one who gained the chair dashed it off with the abandon of a four weeks' old freshman ... "The lectures on musical form were distinguished by many brilliant demonstrations of MacDowell's genius.
But even with this help, MacDowell's labors were increasingly arduous. He now had six courses instead of five, which meant more classes and lectures each week. Perhaps the most severe drain on his time and strength was the continual correction of exercise books and examination papers, a task which he performed with great patience and thoroughness.
His works succeeded from the first in winning serious favor; they have been much played in Germany, in Vienna, St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, and Paris, one of them having been performed three times in a single season at Breslau. MacDowell's Scotch ancestry is always telling tales on him.
Indeed, I think it would not be extravagant to say that he has given us here the noblest musical incarnation of the Arthurian legend which we have. It is singular, by the way, how frequently one is impelled to use the epithet "noble" in praising MacDowell's work; in reference to the "Sonata Eroica" it has an emphatic aptness, for nobility is the keynote of this music.
"Your two pianoforte suites," wrote Liszt from Budapest, in February of that year, "are admirable. I accept the dedication of your concerto with sincere pleasure and thanks." The suites were the first of MacDowell's works to appear in print. The "Two Old Songs," which bear an earlier opus number, 9, were composed at a much later period a fact which is betrayed by their style.
This is continually apparent in "The Lover" and "Sweetheart," fugitively so in the "Prologue," and, in an irresistible degree, in the exceedingly poetic and deeply felt "Epilogue" one of the most typical and beautiful of MacDowell's smaller works.
We know, however, that Beethoven had some poetic idea in his mind as he wrote this; but as he never gave the clew to the world, the music has been swallowed as 'absolute music' by the modern formalists" a comment which would apply almost word for word, with a change of names and titles, to a certain tumultuous and "unbeautiful" passage in MacDowell's "Lancelot and Elaine."
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