rary,
everything that is highly finished and polished, with a keen sense of
the comely and well sounding.

On the whole, therefore, considering the mastery with which he has
worked out his different pieces, and the characteristic and modern
manner in which his poetical suggestions are realized upon the piano,
we are obliged to take Mr. MacDowell very seriously, and to rank him
among the first of writers at the present time. As he is still a young
man, and has accepted the professorship of music at Columbia primarily
for the purpose of having more leisure for composition, other and
greater works ought to follow from his pen. I have been informed that
he has in hand, or already finished, a symphony for full orchestra, and
no doubt his portfolio contains a multitude of other pieces which as
yet he is not ready to give to the world. Many of the songs which he
has published are upon his own verses, and some of them are very
beautiful. In fact, you will rarely find eight songs together so
pleasing and well worth knowing in every way as the "Eight Songs" by
Mr. MacDowell, opus 47.

At the same time, there is a certain amount of make-believe in these
fantastic titles for piano pieces, which, after all, can be nothing
else than more or less legitimate developments of certain musical
motives, as such; and can be satisfactory only in proportion as the
ideas are legitimately unfolded and adequately treated, and contrasted
with other material. Even the marks of expression are arbitrary, a
very amusing illustration of which I am able to give from my own
experience. It happened some months ago that an out-of-town pupil,
connected with a musical club, brought me a program of MacDowell's
works which she had to play at one of the club meetings, and in the
list was the difficult chord study entitled "March Wind." This was
marked pianissimo. It is rather a difficult thing to bring down to
smoothness, and I spent a great deal of time in getting it played
softly, in order to represent the distance of the wind and the rise and
fall of the intensity. A few days later Mr. MacDowell played a recital
in Chicago, and among the other selections was this same "March Wind,"
which he played fortissimo throughout. When I saw him the next day I
began, in that irreverent manner which critics and composers have with
one another (for Mr. MacDowell was not yet a professor): "You're a fine
fellow! To mark your own 'March Wind' pianissimo and the