File:Edward MacDowell (1906) (14775043534).jpg

Identifier: edwardmacdowell00gilm (find matches)
Title: Edward MacDowell
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Gilman, Lawrence, 1878-1939
Subjects: MacDowell, Edward, 1860-1908
Publisher: London New York : John Lane
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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e of Tennysons lines—an objectwhich it accomplishes with astonishing complete-ness. As a feat of sheer tone-painting I know offew things similar in scope and purpose that surpassit in fitness, concision, and felicity. It displays apower of imaginative reconstruction hitherto un-disclosed in MacDowells writing. Here are thesevere and exalted mood of the opening lines ofthe poem, the sense of lonely and wind-swept spaces,which Tennyson has so magnificently and so suc-cinctly conveyed. H ere, too, are the far-off, wrinkledsea, and the final cataclysmic and sudden descent:yet, despite the literalism of the close, there is noyielding of artistic sobriety in the result, for themusic has an unassailable dignity. It remains, evento-day, one of MacDowells most characteristic andadmirable performances. Of the Romanza for cello and orchestra (opus35), the Concert Study (opus 36), and Les Orien-tates (opus 37),—three morceaux for piano, afterVictor Hugo,—I need not speak in detail. Perfunc-
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF A POET 43 tory is the word which one must use to describethe creative impulse of which they are the ungratefullegacy — an impulse less spontaneous, there isreason to believe, than utilitarian. Perhaps theymay most justly be denoted as almost the onlyinstances in which MacDowell has given heed tothe possibility of a reward not primarily andexclusively artistic. The u Marionettes of opus 38 are in a whollydifferent case. Published first in 1888, the yearwhich saw MacDowells return to America after histwelve studious and fruitful years abroad, they havebeen extensively revised and amplified, and nowappear under a radically different guise. In itspresent form, the group comprises six genre studies— Soubrette, Lover, Witch, Clown, Villain, Sweetheart—besides the recently added11 Prologue and Epilogue. Here MacDowell isin one of his happiest moods. It was a fortunateand charming conceit which prompted the plan of theseries, with its half-playful, half-ironic, yet lu

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