Several autobiographical details are embedded within the New England Idyls, which Edward MacDowell wrote in 1902 while serving as professor of composition at Columbia University. The pieces, among MacDowell's finer short piano works, were actually written at the cabin the MacDowell family used as a summer home at Peterborough, NH, where years later MacDowell's widow Marian set up the famous MacDowell Colony for artists.

Each of the New England Idyls is brief, between one and three minutes in length, and unpretentiously atmospheric and tuneful. Most are not particularly demanding for the pianist. As was the case with the earlier Sea Pieces, Op. 55 (1896-1998), MacDowell included short poetic epigraphs with each of the ten Idyls.

The set begins with the gentle nostalgia of "An Old Garden," and moves to the languorous "Mid-summer" and the more somber "Mid-winter" with its sudden flashes of brilliance. "With Sweet Lavender" is quiet and delicate, and "In Deep Woods" is one of MacDowell's numerous short portraits of the woods around Peterborough. For the "Indian Idyll" the composer borrows a melody he found in American scholar Theodore Baker's work on Native American music (which also provided some of the themes for MacDowell's orchestral "Indian" Suite). The solemn grandeur of "To an Old White Pine" is followed by the large Romantic gestures of the eighth of the ten Idyls, "From Puritan Days," whose motto in the score is simply "In Nomine Domini" (In the Name of God). The rollicking, lively "The Joys of Autumn" closes the set. But just before that, comes the penultimate Idyl, "From a Log Cabin," which may have been a portrait of MacDowell's Peterborough home. The poem-motto he included with it in the score was later borrowed by MacDowell's wife for his tombstone:

"A house of dreams untold,

It looks out over the whispering tree-tops

And faces the setting sun."

© All Music Guide

Portions of Content Provided by All Music Guide.
© 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide is a registered trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.