Macdowell's position to-day in creative musical art remains the
same as it was twenty years ago--one of unassailable independence
and individualism. Although these two factors, whether assailable
or not, must be a feature of any composer who lays claim to
greatness, in MacDowell's case they are so marked as to form the
strongest bulwark of his natural position among great music
makers. His tone poetry is of a quality and power that is not
quite like that of any other composer, and in the portraying, or
suggesting, as he preferred to call it, of Natural, Historical
and Legendary subjects he stands alone. Superbly gifted as a
lyrical poet both in the literary and the musical sense, and with
a most refined and keen feeling for the dramatic, he spoke with a
voice of singular eloquence and power. Probably his greatest
achievement was his remarkable, unerring ability to create
atmospheres of widely varied kinds in his music, and in this
respect there is no composer quite his equal. The soft beauty,
grandeur, vastness and might of Nature; the joys and sorrows of
Humanity; the romance of History and imaginative Legend; the
buoyancy of sunshine and wind; the mysteriousness of enchanted
woods; all these he translated with inimitable vividness into
music. He could suggest with as definite and unmistakable a
musical atmosphere, the simple beauty of a little wild flower, as
the might of the sea; as well the fanciful and imaginative scenes
of fairy tale as the wild and lonely vastness of the great
American prairies; as well the joviality and humour of his
countrymen as the elemental strength, and rude, stern manliness
of the North American Indian, and the heroic, stirring atmosphere
of the ancient bards.

That MacDowell was greater than is generally recognised in