important music, this, measured beside that which he afterward put forth; but possessing an individual profile, a savour, a tang, which gave it an immediately recognised distinction.  A new voice spoke out of it, a fresh and confident, an eloquent and forceful, voice.  It betrayed Germanic influences:  of that there was no question; yet it was strikingly rich in personal accent.  Gradually his art came to find, through various forms, a constantly finer and weightier expression.  For orchestra he wrote the “Indian” suite—­music of superb vigour, fantastically and deeply imaginative, wholly personal in quality; for the piano he wrote four sonatas of heroic and passionate content—­indisputable masterworks—­and various shorter pieces, free in form and poetic in inspiration; and he wrote many songs, some of them quite flawless in their loveliness and their emotional veracity.

It will thus be seen why the potent and aromatic art of MacDowell impressed those who were able to feel its charm and estimate its value.  It is mere justice to him, now that he has definitely passed beyond the reach of our praise, to say that he gave to the art of creative music in this country (I am thinking now only of music-makers of native birth) its single impressive and vital figure.  His is the one name in our music which, for instance, one would venture to pair with that of Whitman in poetry.

An abundance of pregnant, beautiful, and novel ideas was his chief possession, and he fashioned them into musical designs with great skill and unflagging art.  That he did not undertake adventures in all of the forms of music, has been said.  There is no symphony in the list of his published works, no large choral composition.  Yet he was far from being a miniaturist,—­he was, in fact, anything but that.  His four sonatas for the piano are planned upon truly heroic lines; they are large in scope and of epical sweep and breadth; and his “Indian” suite is the most impressive orchestral work composed by an American.  He wrote two piano concertos,—­early works, not of his best inspiration,—­a large number of poetically descriptive smaller works, and almost half a hundred songs of frequent loveliness and character.  The three symphonic poems, “Hamlet and Ophelia,” “Lancelot and Elaine,” and “Lamia”; the two “fragments,” “The Saracens,” and “The Lovely Alda,” and the first orchestral suite, op. 42—­which he might have entitled “Sylvan”—­complete the record of his output, save for some spirited but not very important part-songs for male voices.  The list comprises sixty-two opus numbers and one hundred and eighty-six separate compositions,—­not a remarkable accomplishment, in point of quantity, yet notable and rare in quality.