his twenty-fourth year; yet the music is curiously ripe in
feeling and accomplishment. There is breadth and steadiness of view in
the conception, passion and sensitiveness in its embodiment: It is
mellower, of a deeper and finer beauty, than anything he had
previously done, though nowhere has it the inspiration of his later
works.

The second piano concerto (op. 23), completed a year later, is fairly
within the class of that order of music which it has been generally
agreed to describe as "absolute." It is innocent of any programme,
save for the fact that some of the ideas prompted by "Much Ado About
Nothing," which were to form a "Beatrice and Benedick" symphonic poem,
were, as I have related in a previous chapter, incorporated in the
scherzo. Together with its companion work, the first piano concerto;
the "Romanza" for 'cello and orchestra; the concert study, op. 36, and
such conventional _morceaux_ as the early "Serenata" and "Barcarolle"
(of which, it should be noted, there are extremely few among his
productions), it represents the very limited body of his writing which
does not, in some degree, propose and enforce a definite poetic
concept. Not elsewhere in his earlier work has MacDowell marshalled
the materials of his art with so confident an artistry as he exhibits
in this concerto. In substance the work is not extraordinary. The
manner derives something from Grieg, more from Liszt, and there is
comparatively little disclosure of personality. But the manipulation
is, throughout, the work of a music-wright of brilliant executive
capacity. In fundamental logic, in cohesion, flexibility, and symmetry
of organism, it is a brilliantly successful accomplishment. As in all
of MacDowell's writing, its allegiance is to the basic principles of
structure and design, rather than to a traditional and arbitrary
formula.

The succeeding opus (24), comprising the "Humoreske," "March," "Cradle
Song," and "Czardas," is unimportant. Of the four pieces the gracious
"Cradle Song" is of the most worth. The group as a whole belongs to
that inconsiderable portion of his output which one cannot accept as
of serious artistic consequence. With the "Lancelot and Elaine" (op.
25), however, one comes upon a work of the grade of the "Hamlet and
Ophelia" music. MacDowell had a peculiar affinity for the spirit of
the Arthurian tales, and he was happy in whatever musical
transmutation of them he attempted. This tone-poem is, as he avows,
"aft