composition will have a passage marked with four p's.
He likes contrasts and uses them very effectively. His music has the
charm of infinite variety, but there is an insistent note of
sombreness pervading most of it that is heard even above the majesty
of the "Sea Pieces," the beauty of the "Woodland Sketches" and the
humor of the "Marionettes." In the "New England Idyls" there is a
plaintive little wail, "From a Log Cabin," the rustic retreat in the
woods at Peterboro, his "house of dreams untold," where MacDowell did
most of his later composition. It speaks of solitude, isolation and a
moan of the wind is heard in the tree tops, with an answering moan
from the heart of a man who may have had some premonition of his fate.

He is the first composer of world-note since Brahms who did his best
work for the piano. Others have used that instrument as a means
merely, reserving their crowning efforts for the orchestra, where it
is, of course, far less difficult to achieve fine effects. While he
wrote successful orchestral suites, he dignified the single instrument
by devoting his first thought to piano literature.

His humorous suite, "The Marionettes," very strongly suggests Jerome
K. Jerome's "Stageland," in which the villain is represented as an
individual who always wears a clean collar and smokes a cigarette. The
hero approaches the heroine from the rear and "breathes his attachment
down her back," and the poor heroine is pursued by the relentless
storm, while on the other side of the street the sun is shining.
MacDowell portrays the coquettish "Soubrette," the longing "Lover,"
the strong-charactered "Witch," the gay "Clown," the sinister
"Villain" and the simple, tender "Sweetheart," with a Prologue
indicating "sturdy good humor" and an Epilogue to be rendered
"musingly, with deep feeling." The suite is very attractive and in
sharp contrast to his romantic, heroic and lyric work.

Another potent factor in the formation of MacDowell's style of
composition was his love of nature. No one has put truer brooks,
birds, flowers, trees, meadows or sea into tone. Whenever he "loafed
and invited his soul," the tired, city-worn world reaped the benefit.
His lesser piano compositions may be, in a sense, considered in the
light of a diary. We are with him in a fisherman's hut, in deep woods,
on a deserted farm, in the haunted house, by the lily pond, in
mid-ocean, by a meadow brook, by smoldering embers, always seeing the
pictur