or in the depths, are excellent musicians and lovers of harmony and beauty.  They are often victims of over-work because of the determination to make a brilliant success of what they undertake and of their lack of judgment in regard to their powers of endurance.  Sagittarius people are characterized by directness of speech and act.  They are of varied talents, very musical and turn naturally to the spiritual side of life.  They belong to the prophetic realm and see wonderful visions, but are no idle dreamers, being always mentally and physically active.  Whatever there may be in the science of astrology, one who is familiar with the life and character of Edward MacDowell cannot fail to be impressed by the correctness of this delineation, so far as it goes.

But his style of composition is not, to my mind, capricious.  It is the result of many interesting influences of heredity, culture and individual temperament and application.  When he went to Paris, at fifteen, he was a pupil of Marmontel in piano and of Savard in theory and composition; but young as he was, the French school did not satisfy him.  He heard Nicholas Rubinstein play while in Paris, and became fired with enthusiasm by his style and impressed with the idea that in Germany he would find his own.  His father was of Quaker extraction and had decided artistic ability, but his pious parents would not permit him to indulge even the thought of cultivating or pursuing so trivial a calling.  Edward inherited his father’s talent, and while in the French capital, during a period of despondency over his slow progress with the language, he made a caricature of the teacher of his French class on a leaf of his exercise book.  In some way it fell under the tutor’s eye, and it was of such excellence that it aroused new interest in the gifted hoy instead of indignation.  The teacher showed it to one of the leading artists in Paris, who implored young MacDowell to leave off music and study art, assuring him that he had unusual ability.  But the lad also had a well-developed discriminative faculty.  He had chosen his ideal and could not he persuaded to forsake it, preferring tone-pictures to those made with brushes and palette.

Besides the Quaker strain, with its tendency toward dignity, simplicity and openness to the leadings of spirit, he owes to his Celtic lineage the mystic, poetic, dashing, unsophisticated vein that might be easily mistaken for caprice, and to his American birth is due, no doubt, many of the more solid, practical characteristics that combined to produce the proper balance.

Naturally, he was deeply influenced by his foreign teachers and also by his favorites among the great masters whose works he studied.  He is said to have adored Wagner, with Tschaikowsky and Grieg for lesser musical loves.  To what extent he drew upon Wagner no one can say, but that he did so, either unconsciously or with that imitation that is sincerest flattery is very evident.  Many passages suggest Wagner, and one can easily imagine the ardent young American worshiping the great German master, as he in turn had adored Beethoven.