Edward MacDowell - Sea Pieces No.3 “A. D. MDCXX”

MacDowell on a US Postage Stamp

Fame is fleeting, and in this day and age is joined at the hip with taste.  As taste changes, so does fame.  This is perhaps nowhere so easy to see as in musical taste and the strange story of Edward MacDowell.

As with many composers we've seen here, he was a musical prodigy as a child.  At 17, he won a scholarship to the Paris Conservatory, probably the world's premier musical college.  This started a long sojourn in Europe for MacDonald, living in France and Germany.  No less than Franz Liszt introduced him to music publishers.

Returning to the United States, he was invited to be the first music professor at Columbia University.  He was one of the first to be enrolled in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  After his untimely death his face appeared on the postage stamp above.

And yet, few have heard of him (I certainly had not).  I think that this is due to the fickle nature of taste.  You see, MacDonald composed at the end of the Romantic era.  While I love that music, it rapidly faded from fashion as the 20th Century progressed.  As Romantic music faded into the past, so to did MacDowell.

That's a shame.  Today's piece was written to commemorate the Mayflower voyage to Cape Cod.  Quite frankly, it seems perfectly appropriate to celebrate the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.



That was the bit about the Mayflower.  Since it was so short, here's the complete Sea Pieces: