His mother, disheartened over the failure of Stuttgart to justify her expectations, was at a loss how best to solve the problem of her son’s immediate future.  Having heard much of the ability of Carl Heymann, the pianist, as an instructor, Mrs. MacDowell thought of the Frankfort Conservatory, of which Joachim Raff was the head, and where Heymann would be available as a teacher.

She learned from a friend, to whom she had written for advice, that the pianist had promised soon to visit her at her home in Wiesbaden, and it was suggested that the MacDowells pay her a visit at the same time, and thus benefit by the opportunity of becoming acquainted with Heymann.  Mrs. MacDowell and her son were not slow to avail themselves of this proposal, and the end of the year 1878 found them in Wiesbaden.  Here they met Heymann, who had just concluded a triumphantly successful tournee of the European capitals.  They heard him play, and were impressed by his mastery and poetic feeling.  Heymann was not, however, to begin teaching at the Frankfort Conservatory until the following autumn, so MacDowell remained in Wiesbaden, studying composition and theory with the distinguished critic and teacher, Louis Ehlert, while his mother returned to America.

[Illustration:  MACDOWELL AT EIGHTEEN (THE FIGURE AT THE EXTREME LEFT OF THE GROUP) AS A MEMBER OF RAFF’S CLASS AT THE FRANKFORT CONSERVATORY]

“Ehlert,” MacDowell has written, “was very kind to me, and when I asked him for ‘lessons’ he refused flatly, but said he would be glad for us to ‘study together,’ as he put it.  This rather staggered me, as my idea in leaving Paris was to get a severe and regenerating overhauling.  I worked hard all winter, however, and heard lots of new music at the Cur Haus, which was like manna in the desert after my long French famine.  Ehlert, who thought that Heymann was not the man for me, spoke and wrote to Von Bulow about me; but the latter, without even having seen me, wrote Ehlert a most insulting letter, asking how Ehlert dared ‘to propose such a silly thing’ to him; that he was not a music teacher, and could not waste his time on an American boy, anyway.  So, after all, I went to Frankfort and entered the conservatory.”  MacDowell’s first interview with Raff, in the autumn of 1879, was, as he relates, “not promising.”  “Heymann took me to him and told him, among other things, that, having studied for several years the ‘French School’ of composition, I wished to study in Germany.  Raff immediately flared up and declared that there was no such thing nowadays as ’schools’—­that music was eclectic nowadays; that if some French writers wrote flimsy music it arose simply from flimsy attainments, and such stuff could never form a ‘school.’  German and other writers were to be criticised from the same standpoint—­their music was bad, middling, or good; but there was no such thing as cramping it into ‘schools’ nowadays, when all national musical traits were common property.”