towering architecture of cloud forms; so MacDowell has confined
himself within the bounds of such canvases as he paints upon in his
"Four Little Poems" ("The Eagle," "The Brook," "Moonshine," "Winter"),
in his first orchestral suite, and in the inimitable "Woodland
Sketches" and "Sea Pieces." Thus his themes are starlight, a
water-lily, will o' the wisps, a deserted farm, a wild rose, the
sea-spell, deep woods, an old garden. As a fair exemplification of his
practice, consider, let me say, his "To a Water-lily," from the
"Woodland Sketches." It is difficult to recall anything in objective
tone-painting, for the piano or for the orchestra, conceived and
executed quite in the manner of this remarkable piece of lyrical
impressionism. Of all the composers who have essayed tonal
transcriptions of the phases of the outer world, I know of none who
has achieved such vividness and suggestiveness of effect with a
similar condensation. The form is small; but these pieces are no more
justly to be dismissed as mere "miniature work" than is Wordsworth's
"Daffodils," which they parallel in delicacy of perception, intensity
of vision, and perfection of accomplishment. The question of bulk,
length, size, has quite as much pertinence in one case as in the
other. In his work in this sort, MacDowell is often as one who, having
fallen, through the ignominies of daily life, among the barren
makeshifts of reality, "remembers the enchanted valleys." It is
touched at times with the deep and wistful tenderness, the primaeval
nostalgia, which is never very distant from the mood of his writing,
and in which, again, one is tempted to trace the essential Celt. It is
this close kinship with the secret presences of the natural world,
this intimate responsiveness to elemental moods, this quick
sensitiveness to the aroma and the magic of places, that sets him
recognisably apart.

If in the "Indian" suite MacDowell disclosed the full maturity of his
powers of imaginative and structural design, it is in the "Woodland
Sketches" (op. 51) that his speech, freed from such incumbrances as
were imposed upon it by his deliberate adoption of an exotic idiom,
assumes for the first time some of its most engaging and distinctive
characteristics. Consider, for example, number eight of the group, "A
Deserted Farm." Here is the quintessence of his style in one of its
most frequent aspects. The manner has a curious simplicity, yet it
would be difficult to say in what,