Edward Alexander MacDowell was an American pianist and composer.
Background
Edward Alexander MacDowell was born in New York on December 18, 1860.
His father was Scottish and his mother was Irish.
At the age of 8 he began piano lessons, and when he was 15 his mother took him to Paris for study.
Education
For a year Edward Alexander MacDowell was a pupil of Antoine FrançoisMarmontel.
In 1877 MacDowell won a scholarship to the Paris Conservatory.
After 2 years he grew disenchanted with the conservatory and left for Germany. For a brief time MacDowell was a student at the Stuttgart Conservatory and then went to the Frankfurt Conservatory, where he studied piano with Karl Heymann and composition with Joachim Raff.
Career
From 1882 to 1884 Edward Alexander MacDowell wrote a great deal of music.
In 1885 came the first two mature, large works--the Second Piano Concerto and the symphonic poem Hamlet and Ophelia.
There he wrote the most famous of all his works, the Woodland Sketches for piano, as well as the two piano sonatas called "Eroica" and "Tragica. "
Each August the colony presents a four-day festival of musical events.
Achievements
Connections
In 1884, Edward Alexander MacDowell married Marian Griswold Nevins.