that time. The issue was a momentous one, and Mrs. MacDowell, in much perplexity of mind as to the wisest settlement of her son's future, laid the matter before Marmontel, who, fearful of losing one of his aptest pupils, urgently advised her against diverting her son from a musical career. The decision was finally left to MacDowell, and it was agreed that he should continue his studies at the Conservatory. Although it seems not unlikely that, with his natural facility as a painter and draughtsman and his uncommon faculties of vision and imagination, he would have achieved distinction as a painter, it may be questioned whether in that case music would not have lost appreciably more than art would have gained.

Conditions at the Conservatory were not to the taste of MacDowell, for he found his notions of right artistic procedure frequently opposed to those that prevailed among his teachers and fellow students. His growing disaffection was brought to a head during the summer of 1878. It was the year of the Exposition, and MacDowell and his mother attended a festival concert at which Nicholas Rubinstein played in memorable style Tchaikovsky's B-flat minor piano concerto. His performance was a revelation to the young American. "I never can learn to play like that if I stay here," he said resolutely to his mother, as they left the concert hall. Mrs. MacDowell, whose fixed principle it was to permit her son to decide his affairs according to his lights, thereupon considered with him the merits of various European Conservatories of reputation. They thought of Moscow, because of Nicholas Rubinstein's connection with the Conservatory there. Leipsic suggested itself; Frankfort was strongly recommended, and Stuttgart seemed to offer conspicuous advantages. The latter place was finally determined upon, and Mrs. MacDowell and her son went there from Paris at Thanksgiving time, having agreed that the famous Stuttgart Conservatory would yield the desired sort of instruction.

The choice was scarcely a happy one. It did not take MacDowell long to realise that, if he expected to conform to the Stuttgart requirements, he would be compelled to unlearn all that he had already acquired—would have virtually, so far as his technique was concerned, to begin de novo. Rubinstein himself, MacDowell was told by one of the students, would have had to reform his pianistic manners if he had placed himself under the guidance of the Stuttgart pedagogues. Nor does the system of instruction then in effect at the Conservatory appear to have been thorough even within its own sphere. MacDowell used to tell of a student who could play an ascending scale superlatively well, but who was helpless before the problem of playing the same scale in its descending form.

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 tournée 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.

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."

MacDowell remained in the Conservatory for two years, studying composition with Raff and piano with Heymann. His stay there was eminently satisfactory and profitable to himself. He found both Raff and Heymann artistic mentors of an inspiring kind; in Raff, particularly, he encountered a most sympathetic and encouraging preceptor, and an influence at once potent and engrossing—a force which was to direct the currents of his own temperament into definite artistic channels.

For Heymann as a pianist MacDowell had a fervent admiration. He spoke of him as "a marvel," whose technique "seemed mysteriously capable of anything." "When I went to him," MacDowell has said, "I had already transposed most of the fugues and preludes of Bach (Paris ideas of 'thoroughness'!) and had gone through much rough technical work. Heymann let me do what I wanted; but in hearing him practise and play I learned more in a week than I ever had before." When Heymann, who had already begun to show symptoms of the mental disorder which ultimately overcame him, left the Conservatory in 1881, he recommended MacDowell as his successor—a proposal which was cordially seconded by Raff. But there were antagonistic influences at work within the Conservatory. MacDowell's candidacy was opposed by certain of the professors, on account, it was said, of his "youth"; but also, doubtless, because of the advocacy of Heymann, who was not popular with his colleagues; for he dared, MacDowell has said, "to play the classics as if they had been written by men with blood in their veins." So MacDowell failed to get the appointment. He continued, unofficially, as a pupil of Heymann, and went to him constantly for criticism and advice.

MacDowell began at this time to take private pupils, and one of these pupils, an American, Miss Marian Nevins, was later to become his wife. He was then living in lodgings kept by a venerable German spinster who was the daughter of one of Napoleon's officers. She was very fond of her young lodger, and through her he became acquainted with the work of Erckmann-Chartrian, whose tales deeply engrossed him at this time. Later he moved to the Café Milani, on the