Talk:Edward MacDowell

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If I had known that people would attempt to expand this stub with text from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, I would've never written the stub in the first place. Whatever the cultural impact of the 1911 EB may be, it is a lousy reference work to rely on. Just looking over the text for this article, I can spot one error: the mistaken claim that MacDowell destroyed his first eight Opuses. They were in fact published under a pseudonym. Del arte 20:19, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Excised 1911 EB Text

MacDowell's father, an Irishman of Belfast, had emigrated to America shortly before the boy's birth. He had a varied education in music, first under Spanish-American teachers, and then in Europe, at Paris (Claude Debussy being a fellow pupil), Stuttgart, Wiesbaden and Weimar, where he was chiefly influenced by Joachim Raff and Franz Liszt. From 1879 to 1887 he lived in Germany, teaching and studying, and also appearing as solo pianist at important concerts. In 1884 he married Marian Nevins, of New York. In 1888 he returned to America, and settled in Boston till in 1896 he was made professor of music at Columbia University, New York. He resigned this post in 1904, and in 1905 overwork and insomnia resulted in a complete cerebral collapse.

Deeply influenced by modern French models and by German romanticism, full of poetry and atmosphere, and founded on the programme, idea of composition, it is essentially creative in the spirit of a searcher after delicate truths of artistic expression. His employment of touches of American folk-song, suggested by Indian themes, is, characteristic. This is notably the case with his orchestral Indian Suite (1896) and Woodland Sketches for the piano. His first concerto, in A minor, for piano and orchestra, and first pianoforte suite, were performed at Weimar in 1882. His works include orchestral suites and poems, songs, choruses, and various pieces for pianoforte, his own instrument; they are numbered from op. 9 to op. 62, his first eight numbered works being destroyed by him.

[edit] delete the other one?

Can you just delete the EB version since it (1) has probelms of fact and (2) is redundant? I'd do it, but I'm somewhat of a newbie amd am afraid of lousing things up. Jeffmatt 14:06, 4 September 2006 (UTC)