That he undertook his labours there, from the start, in no casual or perfunctory spirit, is made clear by the bare record of his activity.  For the first two years of his incumbency he had no assistant, carrying all the work of his department on his own shoulders.  He devoted from eight to ten hours a week to lectures and class-work; and this represented but a small proportion of the time and labour expended in establishing the new department.  The aim of the instruction was to be twofold.  “First, to teach music scientifically and technically, with a view to training musicians who shall be competent to teach and to compose.  Second, to treat music historically and aesthetically as an element of liberal culture.”  This plan involved five courses of study, and a brief description of them will indicate the scope of the task undertaken by MacDowell.

There was to be, first, a “general musical course,” consisting of lectures and private reading, with illustrations.  This course, while “outlining the purely technical side of music,” aimed at giving “a general idea of music from its historical and aesthetic side,” and it treated of “the beginnings of music, the Greek modes and their evolution, systems of notation, the Troubadours and Minnesingers, counterpoint and fugue, beginnings of opera, the clavecinists, beginnings of programme music, harmony, beginnings of the modern orchestra, evolution of forms, the symphony and opera up to Beethoven.”  A second course (this was not begun until the following year) treated “of the development of forms, the song, romanticism, instrumental development, and the composers for pianoforte, revolutionary influences, the virtuoso, modern orchestration and symphonic forms, the music-drama, impressionism versus absolute music, color versus form, the relationship of music to the other arts, musical criticism.”  A third course treated of “general theory, dictation, harmony, comprising chords and their mutual significance, altered chords, suspensions, modulation, imitation, analysis, and the commencement of composition in the smaller forms.”  A fourth course comprised, in the first term, counterpoint, canon, choral figuration, and fugue; in the second term, “free counterpoint, canon and fugue, analysis, commencement of composition in the larger forms.”  The fifth course treated of “free composition, analysis, instrumentation, symphonic forms,” and the study of “all the orchestral and other instruments, considered collectively and individually,” together with demonstrations of their “technique, possibilities, and limitations.”