192 PART 2 | FROM THE CIVIL WAR THROUGH WORLD WAR I
Europe, the twenty-seven-year-old MacDowell and his wife
moved to Boston, where he launched an American career
centered on composing but funded chiefl y by piano teach-
ing and performing.
In the spring of 1889 MacDowell premiered his Piano Con-
certo no. 2 in D Minor with the Theodore Thomas Orchestra
in New York, followed a month later by a performance with
the Boston Symphony. In July he presented the work again
at the Paris Exposition Universelle in a concert of American
music. When a respected New York critic wrote that the con-
certo deserved placement “at the head of all works of its kind
produced either by a native or adopted citizen of America,”
some observers began to perceive the young composer as
American music’s Man of Destiny. In 1894, when he played
his Second Piano Concerto with the New York Philharmonic,
the conductor, Anton Seidl, a confi rmed Wagnerite, declared
MacDowell superior to Johannes Brahms as a composer. And
two years later MacDowell played his First Piano Concerto in New York with the
Boston Symphony, to great critical acclaim, on a program that also introduced his
Second (Indian) Suite.
This concert proved a turning point in MacDowell’s life. Now reckoned
one of the country’s leading musicians, he was offered the fi rst professor-
ship of music at Columbia University in New York City. In the fall of 1896 he
plunged wholeheartedly into teaching but found that the job left him with
little time for composing. Though he continued to write smaller pieces, no
more orchestral works appeared. In confl ict with Columbia’s president over
the music department’s place in the university, MacDowell resigned in 1904
amid a commotion publicized in the New York press. Emotionally drained,
and perhaps still feeling the effects of a traffi c accident earlier in the year, he
suffered a crisis in health. By December 1904 he was showing signs of serious
mental illness, which gradually worsened. He died early in 1908 at the age
of forty-seven and was buried near his summer home in Peterborough, New
Hampshire, which, through Marian MacDowell’s dedicated efforts, was made
into an art colony in his memory.
W hile MacDowell’s musical talents were uncommon, he also arrived on the
scene at an opportune moment, as Americans were developing an appetite for
classical music and building an infrastructure of ensembles, conservatories,
concert halls, and opera companies to support it. The only missing element was
a composer to signal the nation’s musical maturity. Enter the young, handsome,
charismatic—and modest—MacDowell, seemingly born to the role: impeccably
schooled, with European training and reputation; an excellent performer of his
own music; an artist of broad range who also wrote poetry and showed a knack
for drawing. And his music had a sound of its own.
MacDowell obviously profi ted from the favored role that was thrust upon
him, but eminence brought pressures, too, and they seemed to increase w ith the
years. His Columbia post was a reward for creative artistry, but it imposed duties
that swamped his creative vocation. After 1902 he began several new works but
fi nished none of them. His illness was partly to blame, but MacDowell was also
profoundly self-critical, with a mania for revising his compositions.K Edward MacDowell
(1860–1908) and his wife,
the American pianist Marian
Nevins MacDowell (1857–
1956), who after his death
established their summer
home in Peterborough,
New Hampshire, as the
MacDowell Colony,
a working retreat for
composers, writers, and
artists.172028_08_183-204_r3_ko.indd 192 23/01/13 10:24 AM