oreover, was published all of the music hitherto unprinted which he
cared to preserve.
[7] The only one of his works of equal calibre which does not,
strictly speaking, belong to this period is the set of "Woodland
Sketches"; these were composed during the last part of his stay in
Boston, and were published in the year (1896) of his removal to New
York.
He had bought in 1896 a piece of property near the town of Peterboro,
in southern New Hampshire, consisting of a small farmhouse, some
out-buildings, fifteen acres of arable land, and about fifty acres of
forest. The buildings he consolidated and made over into a rambling
and comfortable dwelling-house; and in this rural "asyl" (as Wagner
would have called it), surrounded by the woods and hills that he
loved, he spent his summers from then until the end of his life. There
most of his later music was written, in a small log cabin which he
built, in the heart of the woods, for use as a workshop. Thus his
summers were devoted to composition, and his winters to the arduous
though absorbing labours of his professorship; in addition, he taught
in private a few classes for which he made time in that portion of the
day which was not taken up by his sessions at the university. During
his first two winters in New York he also served as conductor of the
Mendelssohn Glee Club, and he was for a time president of the
Manuscript Society, an association of American composers. Altogether,
it was a scheme of living which permitted him virtually no opportunity
for the rest and idleness which he imperatively needed.
In New York the MacDowells' home was, during the first year, a house
in 88th Street, near Riverside Drive. Later they lived at the Majestic
Hotel; but during most of the Columbia years--from 1898 till
1902--they occupied an apartment at 96th Street and Central Park West.
After their return from the sabbatical vacation abroad they lived for
a year at the Westminster Hotel in Irving Place, and for a year in an
apartment house on upper Seventh Avenue, near Central Park. When that
was sold and torn down they returned to the Westminster; and there
MacDowell's last days were spent.
After he left Columbia in 1904, he continued his private piano classes
(at some of which he gave free tuition to poor students in whose
talent he had confidence). He should have rested--should have ceased
both his teaching and his composing; for he was in a threatening
condition. Had he spent a yea
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