Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner 147 MacDowell piano pieces or movements

For over two years now I have been creating MIDI sequences
of Edward MacDowell's piano music. Although sequenced MIDI
is by its very nature crude, it can reveal the basic structures of
music that always sound better played live, the intent of my
work on this. Unless pianists have a general idea of what this
music is like, why would they feel a need to seek sheet music in
order to play it?

After all, MacDowell is not held in high esteem by the classical
music community, whose spokesmen like to dismiss his
compositions as too European, or label him a "one hit"
composer, referring to his second piano concerto. They also
like to use "MacDowell" and "miniaturist" in the same sentence,
as if he had not produced 2 piano concertos, 4 piano sonatas,
2 orchestral suites, 4 symphonic poems, and several piano suites
with pieces three or four times the length of the "Woodland Sketches"
pieces.

My homepage now has 147 MacDowell piano pieces or
movements available in MIDI. I am only missing the 8 piano duets
of op. 20 and op. 21, the 5 piano duet transcriptions by MacDowell
of his first suite for orchestra, his solo piano transcription of the
fourth movement of that suite, and his Edgar Thorn piece
"Amourette". I have only 3 of the dozens of MacDowell's piano
transcriptions of mostly Eighteenth Century keyboard pieces, but
perhaps that is enough to spark some interest in finding the others.

Well, kids who work through the Federation of Music Clubs auditions can become quite familiar with MacDowell's music. My son "had" to learn a MacDowell piece this year (Op. 46 no. 4, Improvisation). He really learned a lot about late romantic style by playing it. Who cares if it's too "European." That strikes me as an overly academic critique, and a dated early 20th century attitude to boot. Now that he's made the state finals in the Federation competition he has a developed rather a liking for ol' MacDowell. Enough of a liking to encourage further study. Now he's finishing up Op. 46 no. 12 (Polonaise), which is a wicked good study of six on eight rhythms and chromaticism.


BTW, here's his early take on "Improvisation." He's a lot better at it now.

MacDowell Improvisation Op. 46 no. 4

prismsplay :

You might be interested to know that I - along with two others - am working on "Fantasy Piece for Clarinet, Viola and Piano" written by Christian K. Ellenwood "In celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the MacDowell Music Club of Janesville, Wisconsin November 15, 2003."

Our first - and not yet polished - performance of this work will be on April 29th. Wish us luck!

Regards,

...and I still think his Second Modern Suite is some of the best music written for piano.

MacD's neglect makes me think of an old adage: Those who can, do; those who can't, criticize (too much).


Good luck BruceD. No matter how good you are, it's never bad to have luck on your side.

Although I don't have that high of an opinion of it, two of its six pieces are among my favorites, "Fugato", which requires more dexterity than I have, and "Fantastic Dance", which I have enjoyed working through.

Since MacDowell was a concert pianist prior to getting into composition, nearly all of his 1883-1884 works are virtuoso pieces with considerable development, in contrast to his 1896-1902 simpler, easier-to-play, suites. (But the earlier complexities and virtuosity are present in the four sonatas of his later period.)

Of the 1883-1884 works, my personal favorites are op. 15 First Concerto and op. 17 Two Fantastic Pieces (I think the number 1 "A Tale" is as good as the more popular but more difficult number 2 "Witches' Dance".) In op. 19, Forest Idyls, I especially like "Dance of the Dryads", which I also think is as good as "Witches' Dance".