28 Facts About Edward MacDowell

Edward Alexander MacDowell was an American composer and pianist of the late Romantic period.

Edward MacDowell was best known for his second piano concerto and his piano suites Woodland Sketches, Sea Pieces and New England Idylls.

Edward MacDowell received his first piano lessons from Juan Buitrago, a Colombian violinist who was living with the MacDowell family at the time.

Edward MacDowell received music lessons from friends of Buitrago, including the Cuban pianist Pablo Desverine and Venezuelan pianist and composer Teresa Carreno.

When Franz Liszt and Clara Schumann visited the conservatory in early 1880 and attended a recital of student compositions, Edward MacDowell performed Robert Schumann's Quintet, Op.

In 1884, Edward MacDowell married Marian Griswold Nevins, an American who had been one of his piano students in Frankfurt for three years.

About the time that Edward MacDowell composed a piano piece titled Cradle Song, Marian suffered an illness that resulted in her being unable to bear children.

From 1885 to 1888 Edward MacDowell devoted himself almost exclusively to composition.

Edward MacDowell made Boston his new home, where he became well known as a concert pianist and piano teacher.

Edward MacDowell performed in recitals with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and other American musical organizations.

The MacDowells lived in Boston until 1896, when Edward was appointed professor of music at Columbia University, the first music professor in the university's history.

Edward MacDowell was personally invited to Columbia University by its president Seth Low to create a music department.

In 1896, Marian Edward MacDowell purchased Hillcrest Farm, to serve as their summer residence in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

Edward MacDowell found his creativity flourished in the beautiful rural setting.

Edward MacDowell's compositions included two piano concertos, two orchestral suites, four symphonic poems, four piano sonatas, piano suites, and songs.

Edward MacDowell published dozens of piano transcriptions of mostly 18th century pre-piano keyboard pieces.

From 1896 to 1898, Edward MacDowell published 13 piano pieces and 4 part songs under the pseudonym of Edgar Thorn.

Edward MacDowell was a noted teacher of the piano and music composition.

Edward MacDowell's students included E Ray Goetz, Frances Tarbox and John Pierce Langs, a student from Buffalo, New York, with whom he became very close friends.

Edward MacDowell was often stressed in his position at Columbia University, due to both administrative duties and growing conflict with the new university president Nicholas Murray Butler around a proposed two-course requirement in fine arts for all undergraduate students, as well as creation of combined Department of Fine Arts overseeing music, sculpture, painting and comparative literature.

Indeed, Edward MacDowell had long suffered from insomnia, and potassium bromide or sodium bromide were the standard treatment for that condition, and in fact were used in many common remedies of the day.

Edward MacDowell was in contact with bromides through his avid hobby of photography.

Edward MacDowell sat quietly, day after day, in a chair by a window, smiling patiently from time to time at those about him, turning the pages of a book of fairy tales that seemed to give him a definite pleasure, and greeting with a fugitive gleam of recognition certain of his more intimate friends.

Marian Edward MacDowell cared for her husband to the end of his life.

Edward MacDowell died in 1908 in New York City and was buried at his beloved Hillcrest Farm.

The Edward MacDowell Association backed many American composers, including Aaron Copland, Edgard Varese, Roger Sessions, William Schuman, Walter Piston, Samuel Barber, Elliott Carter, and Leonard Bernstein, in the beginning phases of their careers by awarding them residencies, fellowships, and the Edward MacDowell Medal.

In 1940, Edward MacDowell was one of five American composers honored in a series of United States postage stamps.

Edward MacDowell composed his First Piano Concerto in the key of A minor in 1885 and published it as his Op.