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 born on the eve of the Civil War into a Quaker family in lower Manhattan, where music was a forbidden pleasure. With the help of Latin-American émigré teachers, he became a formidable pianist and composer, spending twelve years in France and Germany establishing his career. Upon his return to the United States in 1888 he conquered American audiences with his dramatic Second Piano Concerto and won his way into their hearts with his poetic Woodland Sketches. Columbia University tapped him as their first professor of music in 1896, but a scandalous row with powerful university president Nicholas Murray Butler spelled the end of his career. MacDowell died a broken man four years later, but his widow Marian kept his spirit alive through the MacDowell Colony, which she founded in 1907 in their New Hampshire home, and which is today the oldest and one of the most influential, thriving artist colonies in the the United States. Drawing on private letters that were sealed for fifty years after his death, this biography traces MacDowell's compelling life story, with new revelations about his Quaker childhood, his efforts to succeed in the insular German music world, his mysterious death, and his lifelong struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder. Edward MacDowell's story is a timeless tale of human strength and weakness set in one of the most vibrant periods of American musical history, when optimism about the country's artistic future made anything seem possible.

The in-depth story of America's premier artists' residency program, published on its centennial anniversary.

An army physician on a mission needs a mother for his child—and plain Jane Kendry Harrison is just what the doctor ordered, in the first book in debut author Caro Carson's miniseries, The Brothers MacDowell! Dashing soldier Jamie MacDowell needs a mother for his infant son, stat! And while the handsome M.D. has no shortage of candidates, he lets his baby boy help with the selection. Little Sam falls for quiet Kendry Harrison—a surprising choice, maybe. But Jamie quickly realizes that the orderly's sweet veneer hides a multitude of attractions—and if he's not careful, he could wind up wrecking their carefully set-up "arrangement." Kendry knows her marriage to Jamie is strictly business, but that doesn't stop her from dreaming of a more permanent place in the healer's heart. If only he'd stop resisting the passion simmering between them. Then maybe he'd realize they were made for each other…and meant to be married in every sense of the word….

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.

Understanding MacDowell's life and times opens a window into the interpretation of his music. This eclectic collection includes a moving illustrated biography, several early works composed under his pen name and his arranged improvisations on themes by J.S. Bach. Includes access to online audio.