art as a song writer is both steady and intelligible.

He has not been especially prolific in this field, when one thinks of
Grieg's one hundred and twenty songs, and of Brahms' one hundred and
ninety-six; not to mention Schumann's two hundred and forty-eight, or
Schubert's amazing six hundred and over. MacDowell has written
forty-two songs for single voice and piano, together with a number of
ingenious and effective pieces for men's voices and for mixed chorus.

He has avowed his methods and principles as a song writer. In an
interview published a few years before his death he declared his
opinion to be that "song writing should follow declamation"--that the
composer "should declaim the poems in sounds: the attention of the
hearer should be fixed upon the central point of declamation. The
accompaniment should be merely a background for the words. Harmony is
a frightful den for the small composer to get into--it leads him into
frightful nonsense. Too often the accompaniment of a song becomes a
piano fantasie with no resemblance to the melody. Colour and harmony
under such conditions mislead the composer; he uses it instead of the
line which he at the moment is setting, and obscures the central
point, the words, by richness of tissue and overdressing; and all
modern music is labouring under that. He does not seem to pause to
think that music was not made merely for pleasure, but to say things.

"Language and music have nothing in common. In one way, that which is
melodious in verse becomes doggerel in music, and meter is hardly of
value. Sonnets in music become abominable. I have made many
experiments for finding the affinity of language and music. The two
things are diametrically opposed, unless music is free to distort
syllables. A poem may be of only four words, and yet those four words