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.

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.

The Classics for the Advancing Pianist series provides motivating, enjoyable literature of substantial quality for developing keyboard artists. The pieces in these books, written by Edward MacDowell and ordered in a logical progression from volume to volume, help the performer work within his or her abilities while developing playing and listening skills. This standard teaching repertoire will help build technique and musicianship, as well as offer hours of personal enjoyment. Titles: * The Brook, Op. 32, No. 2 * Hungarian, Op. 39, No. 12 * Improvisation, Op. 46, No. 4 * Scotch Poem, Op. 31, No. 2 * Shadow Dance, Op. 39, No. 8 * Sung Outside the Prince's Door, Op. 4, No. 1 * To a Water Lily, Op. 51, No. 6 * To an Old White Pine, Op. 62, No. 7

The Classics for the Advancing Pianist series provides motivating, enjoyable literature of substantial quality for developing keyboard artists. The pieces in these books, written by Edward MacDowell and ordered in a logical progression from volume to volume, help the performer work within his or her abilities while developing playing and listening skills. This standard teaching repertoire will help build technique and musicianship, as well as offer hours of personal enjoyment. Titles: * Alla Tarantella, Op. 39, No. 2 * Beauty in the Rose Garden, Op. 4, No. 3 * Bluette, Op. 7, No. 5 * In Autumn, Op. 51, No. 4 * Song, Op. 55, No. 5 * A Tin Soldier's Love, Op. 7, No. 1 * To a Hummingbird, Op. 7, No. 2 * To a Wild Rose, Op. 51, No. 1