The Life And Music Of Edward Macdowell

Understanding MacDowell's life and times opens a window into the interpretation of his music. This eclectic collection includes a moving illustrated biography, several early works composed under his pen name and his arranged improvisations on themes by J.S. Bach. Includes access to online audio.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Edward MacDowell: A Great American Tone Poet, His Life and Music" by John Fielder Porte. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Edward MacDowell: A Study" by Lawrence Gilman. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Edward MacDowell was born on the eve of the Civil War into a Quaker family in lower Manhattan, where music was a forbidden pleasure. With the help of Latin-American émigré teachers, he became a formidable pianist and composer, spending twelve years in France and Germany establishing his career. Upon his return to the United States in 1888 he conquered American audiences with his dramatic Second Piano Concerto and won his way into their hearts with his poetic Woodland Sketches. Columbia University tapped him as their first professor of music in 1896, but a scandalous row with powerful university president Nicholas Murray Butler spelled the end of his career. MacDowell died a broken man four years later, but his widow Marian kept his spirit alive through the MacDowell Colony, which she founded in 1907 in their New Hampshire home, and which is today the oldest and one of the most influential, thriving artist colonies in the the United States. Drawing on private letters that were sealed for fifty years after his death, this biography traces MacDowell's compelling life story, with new revelations about his Quaker childhood, his efforts to succeed in the insular German music world, his mysterious death, and his lifelong struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder. Edward MacDowell's story is a timeless tale of human strength and weakness set in one of the most vibrant periods of American musical history, when optimism about the country's artistic future made anything seem possible.

Edward MacDowell was one of the finest composers of nineteenth-century America. In his lifetime, MacDowell's fame was widespread throughout Europe and the United States; his music was praised by none other than Franz Liszt, Jules Massenet, and Edvard Grieg. While his fame was extensive, MacDowell's place in music began to fade after his untimely and tragic death in 1908, and his music and reputation has since suffered a certain neglect. Alan Levy's biography is the first full-length work on MacDowell and draws extensively on personal papers and letters, largely closed from public access until recently. Levy challenges the omission of MacDowell from most musical histories and returns the spotlight to this long-overlooked composer. Levy covers MacDowell's early life and schooling in New York, his musical studies in France and Germany, and his emergence as a keyboard artist and composer. From there, the biography moves on to MacDowell's successful career in Boston and in Peterboro, New Hampshire. Levy concludes with MacDowell's tenure as the first Professor of Music at Columbia University and his untimely decline and death. There is also discussion of Marian MacDowell's successful establishment of the MacDowell Colony for Artists, which continues to the present day. Alan Levy elegantly captures the story of this composer who enjoyed musical talent and relative popular success during his lifetime. He brings together a great deal of otherwise inaccessible information and material on a somewhat muted voice in American Music History.

This collection of essays explores topics of relevance to understanding Edward MacDowell (1860-1908) and his music. At the height of his career, MacDowell was widely recognized as America's leading composer. He had come of age during an era when the infrastructure of concert music in the United States was expanding rapidly, as outlined in Javier Albo's description of historical concerts in New York during his childhood. MacDowell came from an unusual background that resulted from the interaction between his father's Quaker roots, described in Douglas Bomberger's essay, and his mother's ambitious goals. He benefited from the early advocacy of his mother's best friend, the Venezuelan pianist Teresa Carreño, whose support of MacDowell is explored in Laura Pita's essay. He studied for two years in Paris and then spent a decade in Germany, studying with Liszt's pupil Raff and establishing his career. The crucial influences of Wagner and Liszt on MacDowell's style are explored in essays by Francis Brancaleone and John Graziano. He lived in Boston from 1888 to 1896, during which time he was in close contact with George Whitefield Chadwick, an American contemporary whose career as an organist is examined in an essay by Marianne Betz. MacDowell's growing body of works for piano and orchestra earned him the reputation of America's most important young composer, which led to his appointment as first professor of music at Columbia University in 1896. His contributions as a teacher were ended after eight years by a public dispute with President Nicholas Murray Butler, explored in Michael Joiner's essay. Columbia continued to feel the tension of the issues raised by MacDowell and Butler for generations, as demonstrated in Mark Radice's discussion of Chou Wen-chung's experience on the faculty from the 1960s through the 1990s. After MacDowell's death at the age of forty-seven, his widow Marian developed their Peterborough, NH, farm into an artists' colony that is still prominent today. Robin Rausch's essay, richly illustrated with photos from the Library of Congress, shows how she gained support for her efforts through summer pageants.