Edward Alexander MacDowell was the first American composer to achieve international renown, impressing critics and listeners alike. Like other composers of his time, he was schooled by renowned masters at Europe’s prestigious music academies. He was highly influenced by the European Romantics, and his favorite activity was turning the works of celebrated Romantic European authors to music. He managed to impress reviewers in America and Europe, as well as his contemporaries, during his brief life. The final years of his life were particularly tragic due to his failing health and mental instability, which ended his career prematurely. However, his legacy lives on in his music and in the artist enclave he left to his wife, which she managed for fifty years until her death. His enclave supported tens of thousands of artists and is still operational. For a deeper understanding of the man and his works, please read the brief biography provided below.
Early Life And Childhood For Edward
Edward MacDowell was born in the lower east side of Manhattan, New York City, to milkman Thomas MacDowell and his musically talented wife, Frances Knapp MacDowell. His mother introduced him to music when he was little.
According to her plan, he took his first piano lessons at the age of eight from Juan Buitrago, a Columbian musician who boarded with the MacDowell family at the time. Several of Buitrago’s acquaintances, including the internationally renowned Venezuelan pianist Teresa Carreno, provided him with additional piano instruction and support. In addition, he studied piano with the Cuban pianist Pablo Desverine.
17-year-old MacDowell traveled to Paris with his mother to advance his musical career, where he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire in 1877. He was also granted a scholarship, which allowed him to enter the studio of the most sought-after pianist in Paris, Antione Francois Marmontel. The following year, after seeing a concert featuring Nikolai Rubinstein, he decided to leave Paris and study in Germany.
In 1879, he left Paris for the famed Dr. Hoch’s Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany, where he continued his piano studies with Carl Heymann and composition studies with Joachim Raff. In 1880, the renowned Hungarian composer Franz Liszt visited the conservatory and watched a performance of student compositions, at which MacDowell performed some of his own pieces and a symphonic poem by Liszt.
The First and Second Modern Suites that he issued as a result of Liszt’s advice to focus more on writing than playing were tremendously popular. His old friend and tutor, Carreno, also contributed to its success by playing his pieces frequently. Carl Heymann began his teaching career at the Darmstadt Conservatory in 1881 but departed the following year to continue teaching privately.
A Later Life
After his marriage in 1884, the couple initially stayed in Frankfurt before relocating to Wiesbaden. From 1885 through 1888, MacDowell solely composed, but he returned to the United States in the fall of 1888 owing to financial difficulties.
He and his wife resided in Boston, the hub of American concert life, until 1896 when he was named head of Columbia University’s newly created music department. In addition to teaching and composing at the university, he also directed the Mendelssohn Glee Club, creating music for the group, a role he held until 1898.
Near 1896, Marian MacDonald acquired the Hillcrest Farm in Peterborough, New Hampshire. The farm functioned as their summer house, and in the idyllic location, MacDonald’s inventiveness reached new heights.
In 1904, he departed Columbia University as a result of a heated disagreement with the institution’s new president, Murray Butler. He was selected as the first of seven individuals to join the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This membership encouraged the couple to establish an artist colony near their New Hampshire summer home.
In the same year, a Hansom cab ran over MacDowell. Due to the trauma of his battle with Butler, which was widely reported, the accident exacerbated his growing condition and dementia, putting an end to his teaching and composing career as he steadily lost his cognitive abilities.
To assist the MacDowells through this tragedy, the Mendelssohn Glee Club gathered funds for his medical care, and his friends launched a public plea. Former President Grover Cleveland, George Whitefield Chadwick, J.P. Morgan, Horatio Parker, Andrew Carnegie, Victor Herbert, Arthur Foote, and Fred Converse were among those who participated in fund-raising.
His wife, Marian, cared for him till he passed away. By deeding Hillcrest Farm to the Edward MacDowell Association one year prior to his death, Marian founded the MacDowell Colony, a haven for writers, artists, composers, and sculptors.
As a piano instructor, MacDowell gained widespread fame. John Pierce Langs, one of his students, introduced him to the Canadian pianist Harold Bradley. They were both ardent admirers of his piano pieces. Edward Sapir, one of his former students, later became a prominent figure in the field of linguistics.
Edward MacDowell’s Works
The decade following his return to Boston was his most successful, and the majority of his popular work was composed during this time. His compositions, including the Second Piano Concerto, Indian Suite, Sonata Tragica, nearly all of his songs, and Woodland Sketches, were praised throughout the United States.
During his tenure as director of the Glee Club, he published under the alias Edgar Thorn 13 piano pieces and 4 part-songs. Since he ran the club, he believed that the members would be obligated to perform his works if they knew he wrote them. He conducted eight of his published works with the Glee Club between 1896 and 1898.
From 1880 through 1901, MacDowell composed a large number of solo songs. The lyrics of Klopstock, Heine, and Goethe influenced the earliest tunes. In addition to his own poems, his later songs were based on the works of Burns, Shakespeare, Gardner, and Howells.
All of his major works were influenced by German folklore and Romanticists. His paintings also demonstrate an appreciation for French, English, and Scottish Romantics.
His Important Works
Hamlet and Ophelia (1885)
Lancelot and Elaine (1888)
The Saracens at Lamia (1889). (1891)
Indian Suite (1892)
Sea Pieces (1898)
Fireside Tales (1892)
Tragica (1893)
Eroica (1895)
Norse (1900)
Keltic (1901)
Forest Sketches (1896)
Idyllic Pictures of New England (1902)
Individual Life And Death
MacDowell married Marian Griswold Nevins in secret on July 11, 1884, with the formal wedding being on July 21. Three years ago, she was one of his students in Frankfurt.
It is said that when he was a teacher, he produced a piano piece titled “Cradle Song,” because Marian was suffering from a disease that prevented her from having children. Edward MacDowell died at age 47 in 1908 and was interred on the grounds of the MacDowell Colony.
Edward MacDowell’s Honors
The United States Postal Service issued a series of postage stamps honoring five American composers in 1940. MacDowell was among the group.
Estimated Net Worth
Unknown.