Edward MacDowell

Edward MacDowell (1860–1908) was an American composer and pianist, the most admired American composer of his generation. Born in New York, he studied in Paris and Germany, where Liszt encouraged him, and taught in Darmstadt and Wiesbaden before returning to America in 1888. His piano sonatas, two piano concertos, orchestral suites and short pieces such as Woodland Sketches, with the popular To a Wild Rose, combined German Romanticism with American subjects. In 1896 he became the first professor of music at Columbia University, where he gave the lectures collected in Critical and Historical Essays. After his early death his widow founded the MacDowell Colony for artists in New Hampshire.