Edward MacDowell was one of the most prolific American composers to come out of the United States in the late 1800s. I have always promoted American composers, one of my favorites being the ragtime composer Scott Joplin, and Edward MacDowell. He is considered a composer of the late Romantic period and his most famous piece is “To A Wild Rose” from his piano suite Woodland Sketches, written in 1896, when he was on a summer retreat in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
I, as a player of classical music and jazz, prefer to study American composers, as opposed to European composers of the style of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, because I believe in promoting the music of my own country. MacDowell was trained in the classics. His mother Fanny decided to bring her son to Paris, France, where at the age of 17, he was accepted into the Paris Conservatory after receiving a scholarship for international students. MacDowell spent most of his studies in Germany where he studied piano and composition. He met composers Franz Liszt and Clara Schumann during this period and Liszt introduced MacDowell to Leipzig music publishers so he could publish his own pieces. After his studies MacDowell composed, performed, and taught piano lessons.
In 1884, MacDowell married his wife Marian Griswold Nevins, an American pianist whom he taught piano in Frankfurt for three years. The couple lived in Frankfurt, Darmstadt and finally Wiesbaden. In the latter city, he became devoted solely to composition, which brought about financial difficulties. They decided to return to the United States in 1888 and lived in Boston, where MacDowell performed as a concert pianist and taught piano. In 1896 MacDowell was appointed a professor of music at Columbia University, in which he was the first music professor in the university’s history. During this period, he wrote some of his most well-known piano collections, Woodland Sketches (1896), Sea Pieces (1898) and New England Idylls (1902). He remained at Columbia until 1904.
MacDowell began to run into problems with the music program at Columbia when the new university president, Nicholas Murray Butler, entered the picture. Butler recommended a proposed two-course requirement in fine arts for all undergraduate students and a creation of a combined Department of Fine Arts program that oversaw music, sculpture, painting, and comparative literature. This change in the program stressed MacDowell and Butler accused MacDowell of unprofessional conduct and sloppy teaching. Butler also stripped the academic affairs voting rights of faculty members in the arts. MacDowell resigned his position in February of 1904.
This move was the beginning of the end for MacDowell. He fell into severe depression, suffering from seasonal affective disorder throughout most of his life. This disorder did affect his decision making during this period. A recent theory mentions that MacDowell may have suffered from bromide poisoning. MacDowell did suffer from insomnia and potassium bromide, or sodium bromide was a treatment for this condition during this period. Also, in 1904 MacDowell was accidently hit by a Hansom cab which may have added to his growing psychiatric disorder and dementia.
Lawrence Gilman, who wrote a 1908 biography of MacDowell, explains “His mind became as that of a little child. He sat quietly, day after day, in a chair by a window, smiling patiently from time to time at those about him, turning the pages of a book of fairy tales that seemed to give him a definite pleasure, and greeting with a fugitive gleam of recognition certain of his more intimate friends.”
MacDowell died in 1908 in New York City. His legacy does continue thru his music and an artists’ residency and workshop that Marian and Edward MacDowell founded called MacDowell. It is still in operation in Peterborough, New Hampshire. It is an artists’ residency program conducted through a nonprofit association in honor of MacDowell. Here is a link to their website: MacDowell - MacDowell
Here are youtube links to some of his compositions.
To a Wild Rose
Woodland Sketches
Sea Pieces
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