are of interest, for they testify to the prompt and ungrudging recognition which was accorded to MacDowell's work, from the first, by responsible critics in his own country.

He might well have felt some pride in the sum of his achievements at this time. He had not completed his twenty-seventh year; yet he had published a concerto and two orchestral works of important dimensions—"Hamlet and Ophelia" and "Lancelot and Elaine"; most of the music that he had so far written had been publicly performed, and almost invariably praised with warmth; and he was becoming known in Europe and at home. His material affairs, however, were far from being in a satisfactory or promising condition; for there was little more than a precarious income to be counted upon from his compositions; and he had given up teaching. Musicians from America began coming to the little Wiesbaden retreat to visit the composer and his wife, and he was repeatedly urged to return to America and assume his share in the development of the musical art of his country. It was finally decided that, all things considered, conditions would be more favorable in the United States; and in September, 1888, the MacDowells sold their Wiesbaden cottage, not without many pangs, and sailed for their own shores.

They settled in Boston, as being less huge and tumultuous than New York, and took lodgings in Mount Vernon Street. In later years they lived successively at 13 West Cedar Street and at 38 Chestnut Street. Though all of his more important music was as yet unwritten, MacDowell found himself already established in the view of the musical public as a composer abundantly worthy of honour at the hands of his countrymen. He made his first public appearance in America, in the double capacity of pianist and composer, at a Kneisel Quartet concert in Chickering Hall, Boston, on November 19, 1888, playing the Prelude, Intermezzo, and Presto from his first piano suite, and, with Kneisel and his associates, the piano part in Goldmark's B-flat Quintet. He was cordially received, and Mr. Apthorp, writing in the Transcript of his piano playing, praised his technique as "ample and brilliant," and as being especially admirable "in the higher phases of playing"; "he plays," wrote this critic, "with admirable truth of sentiment and musical understanding." Of the early and immature suite he could not well write with much enthusiasm, though he found in it "life and brightness."

In the following spring MacDowell made a more auspicious appearance, and one which more justly disclosed his abilities as a composer, when, on March 5, he played his second concerto, for the first time in public, at an orchestral concert in Chickering Hall, New York, under the direction of Mr. Theodore Thomas. His success was then immediate and emphatic. Mr. Krehbiel, in the Tribune, praised the concerto as "a splendid composition, so full of poetry, so full of vigor, as to tempt the assertion that it must be placed at the head of all works of its kind produced by either a native or adopted citizen of America"; and he confessed to having "derived keener pleasure from the work of the young American than from the experienced and famous Russian"—Tchaikovsky, whose Fifth Symphony was performed then for the first time in New York. "Several enthusiastic and unquestionably sincere recalls," concluded the writer, "were the tokens of gratitude and delight with which his townspeople rewarded him." A month later MacDowell played the same concerto in Boston, at a Symphony concert, under Mr. Gericke; his performance of it evoked "rapt attention," and "the very heartiest of plaudits, in which both orchestra and audience joined."

In the summer of that year (1889) MacDowell and his wife went abroad. He had been invited to take part in an "American Concert" at the Paris Exposition, and on July 12, under Mr. Van der Stucken's direction, he played his second concerto.^[4] After a short stay on the continent, he returned with his wife to America.

MacDowell found in Boston a considerable field for his activity as pianist and teacher. He took many private pupils, and he made, during the eight years that he remained there, many public appearances in concert. In composition, these years were the most fruitful of his life. He wrote during this period the Concert Study for piano (op. 36); the set of pieces after Victor Hugo's "Les Orientales" (op. 37)—"Clair de lune," "Dans le Hamac," "Danse Andalouse"; the "Marionettes" (op. 38); the "Twelve Studies" of op. 39; the "Six Love Songs" (op. 40); the two songs for male chorus (op. 41)—"Cradle Song" and "Dance of the Gnomes"; the orchestral suite in A-minor (op. 42) and its supplement, "In October" (op. 42-A);^[5] the "Two Northern Songs" and "Barcarolle" (op. 43 and op. 44) for mixed voices; the "Sonata Tragica" (op. 45); the 12 "Virtuoso Studies" of op. 46; the "Eight Songs" (op. 47); the second ("Indian") suite for orchestra; the "Air" and "Rigaudon" (op. 49) for piano; the "Sonata Eroica" (op. 50); and the "Woodland Sketches" (op. 51). This output did not contain his most mature and characteristic works—those were to come later, during the last six years of his creative activity; yet the product was in many ways a notable one, and some of it—the two sonatas, the "Indian" suite, the songs of op. 47, the "Woodland Sketches"—was, if not consistently of his very best, markedly fine and characteristic in quality. This decade (from 1887 to 1897) saw also the publication of all his work contained between his op. 22 ("Hamlet and Ophelia") and op. 51 (the "Woodland Sketches") with the exception of the symphonic poem "Lamia," which was not published until after his death.

Meanwhile his prestige grew steadily. Each new work that he put forth met with a remarkable measure of success, both among the general public and at the hands of many not over-complacent critical appraisers. On January 10, 1890, his "Lancelot and Elaine" was played at a Boston Symphony concert under Mr. Nikisch. In September, 1891, his orchestral suite in A-minor (op. 42) was performed for the first time at the Worcester Festival, and a month later it was played in Boston at a Symphony concert under Mr. Nikisch. In November of the same year the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, under Bernhard Listemann, performed for the first time, at the Tremont Theatre, his "Roland" pieces, "The Saracens" and "The Lovely Aldâ." On the following day—November 6, 1891—he gave his first piano recital, playing, in addition to pieces by Bach, Schubert, Schumann, Templeton Strong, P. Geisler, Alabieff, and Liszt, his own "Witches' Dance," "Shadow Dance" (op. 39), "The Eagle," the Étude in F-sharp (op. 36), the Prelude from the first suite, and the fourth of the "Idyls" after Goethe. He followed this with a second recital in January, 1892, at which he played, among other things, the "Winter," "Moonshine," and "The Brook," from the "Four Little Poems" (op. 32). Discussing the first of these recitals, Mr. Philip Hale (in the Boston Post) wrote these words, which have a larger application than their reference to MacDowell: "No doubt, as a composer, he has studied and mastered form and knows its value; but he prefers suggestions and hints and dream pictures and sleep-chasings to all attempts to be original in an approved and conventional fashion.... They [his compositions] are interesting, and more than that: they are extremely characteristic in harmonic colouring. Their size has nothing to do with their merits. A few lines by Gautier stuffed with prismatic words and yet as vague as mist-wreaths may in artistic worth surpass whole cantos of more famous poets; and Mr. MacDowell has Gautier's sense of colour and knowledge of the power of suggestion." His performance "was