"A house of dreams untold,
It looks out over the whispering tree-tops
And faces the setting sun."

[Illustration: THE "HOUSE OF DREAMS UNTOLD"--THE LOG CABIN IN THE
WOODS AT PETERBORO WHERE MACDOWELL COMPOSED, AND WHERE MOST OF HIS
LATER MUSIC WAS WRITTEN]

The music of this piece is suffused with a mood that is Schumann-like
in its intense sincerity of impulse, yet with a passionate fulness and
ardour not elsewhere to be paralleled. It is steeped in an atmosphere
which is felt in no other of his works, is the issue of an inspiration
more profoundly contemplative than any to which he had hitherto
responded.




CHAPTER VI

THE SONATAS


MacDowell never hesitated, as I have elsewhere said, to adapt--some
would say "warp"--the sonata form to the needs of his poetic purposes.
Moreover, he declared his convictions as to the considerations which
should govern its employment. "If the composer's ideas do not
imperatively demand treatment in that [the sonata] form," he has
observed--"that is, if his first theme is not actually dependent upon