A timeless tale of human strength and weakness set in one of the most vibrant periods of American musical history, MacDowell traces the composer's rise from humble beginnings in lower Manhattan to the pinnacle of musical fame, and the precipitous fall from grace that followed.

Edward MacDowell was one of America's first and most important native-born composers. Smaller piano works have enhanced MacDowell's reputation more than any of his other compositions. He was a miniaturist and his small works are naturally imbued with sparkle and a charming romantic atmosphere. This early collection of piano pieces was written while the MacDowells lived in a small cottage outside of Wiesbaden, Germany. Legends, elves and love of nature permeated these character pieces. An Elfin Round" is a Federation Festivals 2016-2020 selection. A Federation Festivals 2020-2024 selection."

Edward MacDowell’s European Piano Music is a critical study of the piano music that MacDowell composed during his European sojourn (1876–1888), steeped in reception history and with a special emphasis of programmaticism. The book expands current knowledge of MacDowell’s childhood in four of the chapters based on his previously uninvestigated sheet music collection, thereby achieving a better balance among the stages of MacDowell’s life than is evident in most books of the life-and-works variety. Prolific contemporaneous music criticism, meticulously preserved in MacDowell’s scrapbooks, is likewise undervalued in the MacDowell literature, but it furnishes penetrating observations about the expressive and programmatic content of numerous compositions, especially as it was revealed to critics when MacDowell performed his own works. Lastly, the book offers explanations for why MacDowell immersed himself in European culture for decades and then, at a crucial juncture in his career, embraced diverse American heritages and worked toward a conception of a pluralistic music that was American “in a creative sense.” The book’s content and methodology would appeal most directly to specialists within the broad fields of musicology and music theory, particularly within American art music and its composers; nineteenth-century music; program music; reception history; and piano literature.

This practical resource provides foundational tools for scale, chord and arpeggio playing; exercises for developing precision, speed, agility and clarity of tone; and exercises and etudes that focus on a variety of technical challenges.