Edward MacDowell

Edward Alexander MacDowell ( December 18, 1860 in New York City; † January 23, 1908 ) was an important American composer and pianist.

MacDowell received a piano with Teresa Carreño and studied from 1876 in Paris with Antoine François Marmontel and Marie Gabriel Augustin Savard, in Wiesbaden, near Louis Ehlert and Joachim Raff and Carl Heymann at the Hoch Conservatory. In 1888 he returned to the U.S. and founded the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the artists' colony MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Eight years he headed the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1896, he became the first professor of art and music at Columbia University in New York City.

As the first American composer ever he won the respect of the Europeans. His fame is based on his piano works and the settings of poems by German poet Heine and Goethe.

Piano Works

Piano concertos and sonatas:

  • Piano Concerto No.1 in A Minor, Opus 15
  • Piano Concerto No.2 in D minor, Opus 23
  • Sonata No.1 " Tragica " in G Minor, Opus 45
  • Sonata No.2 "Eroica" in G Minor, Opus 50
  • Sonata No.3 " Norse " in D Minor, Opus 57
  • Sonata No.4 " Keltic " in E Minor, Opus 59

Orchestral Suites

  • Suite No.. 1
  • Suite No.. 2 ( "Indian Suite")

Other well-known piano works:

  • Forest idylls, Opus 19
  • Six idyll by Goethe, Opus 28
  • Six Poems after Heine, Opus 31
  • Woodland Sketches, Opus 51
  • New England Idyls, Opus 62
  • Second modern suite, Opus 14

Tone poems

  • Elaine and Lancelot
  • Lamia
  • Hamlet and Ophelia
Peterborough (New Hampshire) Integrated Authority File
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