MACDOWELL (1861). In venturing the assertion that MacDowell stands apart on his exalted pinnacle of fame, there is not the slightest danger of incurring disparaging comparisons between him and his eminent contemporaries who have been classified under this heading. Paine's monumental achievements are unassailable. Buck occupies an honorable position as one of the foremost of our writers of church music. Foote and Chadwick have each of them established their respective individuality as composers of exceptional ability. Parker holds undisputed sway in his particular domain. What separates MacDowell from his colleagues is the difference between his perspective and theirs. His conceptions betray certain tendencies that are foreign to their Anglo-Saxon ruggedness with its Teutonic substructure. MacDowell's Scotch ancestry, his intimacy with Raff, his contact with the artistic life of Paris,--all these circumstances helped to mould his exceptional genius into a form distinctly original and unique. It is natural that the influence of his teacher, Raff, should predominate. But whereas Raff's programmatic expositions deal in the romance of enchantment, of the supernatural, of the fantastic, MacDowell pins his faith to the romance of poetic imagination symbolic of emotional realities. Lawrence Gilman, in a persuasive essay on MacDowell, eulogizes, together with other works, his symphonic poems "Hamlet and Ophelia," "Lancelot and Elaine," "The Saracens" and "Lovely Alda" as "the works of a master of imaginative expression, a penetrative psychologist, above all, an exquisite poet." The same writer further remarks that "MacDowell has chosen occasionally to employ, in the realization of his purposes, what seems at first to be precisely the magical apparatus so necessary to the older romanticism. Dryads and elves inhabit his world, and he dwells at times under faery boughs and in enchanted woods; but for him, as for the poets of the Celtic tradition, these things are but the manifest images of an interior passion and delight. Seen in the transfiguring mirror of his music, the moods and events of the natural world and of the incessant drama of psychic life are vivified into shapes and designs of irresistible beauty and appeal. Both in theory and in practice, MacDowell stands uncompromisingly for music that is, of intention, persistently pictorial and impressionistic.... It is as much in his choice of subjects as in the peculiar vividness and felicity of his expression, that he is unique among tone-poets of the external world." The above citations present a faithful picture of MacDowell's philosophical reasonings. His chord formation, harmonic progressions, thematic treatment and structural form are all in accord with the psychological subtleties to be expressed.