the conservatory." MacDowell's first interview with Raff, in the
autumn of 1879, was, as he relates, "not promising." "Heymann took me
to him and told him, among other things, that, having studied for
several years the 'French School' of composition, I wished to study
in Germany. Raff immediately flared up and declared that there was no
such thing nowadays as 'schools'--that music was eclectic nowadays;
that if some French writers wrote flimsy music it arose simply from
flimsy attainments, and such stuff could never form a 'school.'
German and other writers were to be criticised from the same
standpoint--their music was bad, middling, or good; but there was no
such thing as cramping it into 'schools' nowadays, when all national
musical traits were common property."

MacDowell remained in the Conservatory for two years, studying
composition with Raff and piano with Heymann. His stay there was
eminently satisfactory and profitable to himself. He found both Raff
and Heymann artistic mentors of an inspiring kind; in Raff,
particularly, he encountered a most sympathetic and encouraging
preceptor, and an influence at once potent and engrossing--a force
which was to direct the currents of his own temperament into definite
artistic channels.

For Heymann as a pianist MacDowell had a fervent admiration. He spoke
of him as "a marvel," whose technique "seemed mysteriously capable of
anything." "When I went to him," MacDowell has said, "I had already
transposed most of the fugues and preludes of Bach (Paris ideas of
'thoroughness'!) and had gone through much rough technical work.
Heymann let me do what I wanted; but in hearing him practise and play
I learned more in a week than I ever had before." When Heymann, who
had already begun to show symptoms of the mental disorder which