page_title: Edward MacDowell
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Edward MacDowell / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: US Postage stamp, Edward A. MacDowell, issue of 1940, 5c, blue
context_page_description: Edward Alexander MacDowell was an American composer and pianist of the late Romantic period. He was best known for his second piano concerto and his piano suites Woodland Sketches, Sea Pieces and New England Idylls. Woodland Sketches includes his most popular short piece, "To a Wild Rose". In 1904 he was one of the first seven Americans honored by membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
context_section_description: In Germany, the MacDowells settled first in Frankfurt, then in Darmstadt, and finally, in Wiesbaden. From 1885 to 1888 MacDowell devoted himself almost exclusively to composition. That brought financial difficulties, and he decided to return to the United States in the autumn of 1888. He made Boston his new home, where he became well known as a concert pianist and piano teacher. He performed in recitals with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and other American musical organizations.
  The MacDowells lived in Boston until 1896, when Edward was appointed professor of music at Columbia University, the first music professor in the university's history. He was personally invited to Columbia University by its president Seth Low to create a music department. He stayed at Columbia until 1904. In addition to composing and teaching, from 1896 to 1898 he directed the Mendelssohn Glee Club. MacDowell composed some music for the group to perform.
  In 1896, Marian MacDowell purchased Hillcrest Farm, to serve as their summer residence in Peterborough, New Hampshire. MacDowell found his creativity flourished in the beautiful rural setting. His compositions included two piano concertos, two orchestral suites, four symphonic poems, four piano sonatas, piano suites, and songs. He also published dozens of piano transcriptions of mostly 18th century pre-piano keyboard pieces.
  From 1896 to 1898, MacDowell also published 13 piano pieces and 4 part songs under the pseudonym of Edgar Thorn. These compositions were not mentioned in Lawrence Gilman's 1909 biography of MacDowell. They were listed without opus numbers in MacDowell's Critical and Historical Essays (1912) and in John F. Porte's Edward MacDowell (1922). They were listed with opus numbers in Oscar Sonneck's Catalogue of First Editions of Edward MacDowell (1917).
  MacDowell was also a noted teacher of the piano, and his students included John Pierce Langs, a student from Buffalo, New York, with whom he became very close friends. Langs was also close to noted Canadian pianist Harold Bradley, and both championed MacDowell's piano compositions. The linguist Edward Sapir was also among his students.
  MacDowell was often stressed in his position at Columbia University, due to both administrative duties and growing conflict with the new university president Nicholas Murray Butler around a proposed two-course requirement in fine arts for all undergraduate students, as well as creation of combined Department of Fine Arts overseeing music, sculpture, painting and comparative literature. After Butler stripped the academic affairs voting rights of Columbia faculty members in the arts and accused MacDowell of unprofessional conduct and sloppy teaching, in February 1904, MacDowell abruptly announced his resignation raising an unfortunate public controversy.
  After stepping down from Columbia professorship, MacDowell fell into depression and his health rapidly deteriorated. E. Douglas Bomberger's biography notes that MacDowell suffered from seasonal affective disorder throughout his life, and often made decisions with negative implications in the darkest months of the year. Bomberger advances a new theory for the sudden decline of MacDowell's health: bromide poisoning, which was sometimes mistaken for paresis at the time, as was the case with MacDowell's death certificate. Indeed, MacDowell had long suffered from insomnia, and potassium bromide or sodium bromide were the standard treatment for that condition, and in fact were used in many common remedies of the day. MacDowell also was in contact with bromides through his avid hobby of photography.
  A 1904 accident in which MacDowell was run over by a Hansom cab on Broadway may have contributed to his growing psychiatric disorder and resulting dementia. Of his final years, Lawrence Gilman, a contemporary, described: "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 gree
caption: Edward A. MacDowell, US Postage, Issue of 1940
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