MacDowell - Woodland Sketches, op.51 (1896)
MacDowell is easily overshadowed as being a kind of American counterpart to European late Romantics turning toward Modernism. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s one of those composers who are well known in their home country but not really performed abroad.
The Woodland Sketches is a suite of short piano pieces depicting different scenes around the New Hampshire farm MacDowell and his wife Marian purchased to use as a retreat. Through this suite we get a glimpse of the idyllic New England countryside from the end of the 19th century. The vast majority of music I write about and listen to comes from the “past”, recent and distant, so MacDowell isn’t unique in depicting a bygone era…but I do feel more sentimentality from these sketches because of how specifically old-time American they sound with the inclusions of Native American musical ideas, melodies that remind me of hymns or spirituals, and precursors to the pastoral style that would mark Copland’s music as uniquely American
The opening piece is MacDowell’s most popular work, “To a Wild Rose”. Reading up on this music, it’s another interesting example of a composer not thinking much of a piece and intending to throw it away, only for it to explode in popularity after publishing. It is a simple melody that is colored by a few Impressionistic harmonies, or rather, instead of staying in a more basic chord progression, we lean in the direction of Debussy’s preludes that would be written the following decade. The main melody is reminiscent of a melody from the Brotherton Indians - a tribe related to those of the Algonquin language family - which gives the music a distinct American touch. No doubt the music’s popularity comes from having a charming melody with unexpected harmonies, being only two pages long, and being technically accessible to amateur pianists.
The Will’o the Wisp is a technical contrast, a light scherzo of figurations that are reminiscent of Chopin and Liszt. The patterns are quick and hushed to create the kind of fleeting capriciousness of superstitious lore behind the natural phenomenon.
An Old Trysting Place goes back to the tenderness of the opening piece, a melancholic melody trying to create the nostalgia of coming back to the place where one had met their lover, this time with a longer melody with chords that flesh it out more.
In Autumn is reminiscent of hunting horns, with little chromatic runs maybe evoking leaves in the wind. The fun opening section is contrasted by a slower chordal passage, until the “wind” builds up underneath and brings us back to the A section
From an Indian Lodge tries to depict a pow wow from the Brotherton Indians, and also uses a few different indigenous melodies that MacDowell found from Thomas Baker’s musicological dissertation on North American Indian music. The piece opens with stately octaves, with the main section being a “mournful” melody also written in bare octaves with soft chords in between, almost orchestral or a texture you would hear from Liszt.
To a Water Lily is also popular, not as much as the Rose piece, but it has the similar effect of a charming melody decorated with impressionist chords, and in this case the music is spread with thick chords high up on the keyboard over low octaves and open chords, creating the shimmering resonance that Debussy would base much of his piano music on.
From Uncle Remus is another quick and fun piece, trying to recreate the texture of the banjo and American Southern music. Uncle Remus was a folklore figure among Black Americans who were former slaves in the South. MacDowell had never been to the South, so this is more of an imagination of what the general character of the music would be like.
A Deserted Farm is a somewhat bleak melody over soft and deep minor chords. There is a light contrast in the middle, and both sections have a folkish quality. I can say that I do sometimes feel this kind of emotion when driving through the countryside seeing old decrepit barns and farm houses.
By a Meadow Brook tries to create the scene of water racing over rocks in a babbling brook that went through the New Hampshire property. It is very short and a charming scene picture.
Told at Sunset is a fitting end piece, having a few evocations of melodies from earlier in the suite. The middle section uses a Scottish snap rhythm, giving the music a fun bouncy quality. After a return of the mournful Indian Lodge melody, the suite’s coda ends with a surprising set of loud chords. I’m surprised that the music doesn’t die away given the imagery of the title.
