4. _As the Gloaming Shadows Creep_ (_Tenderly_). This is one of MacDowell's finest songs. The words are "after Frauenlob," and were used previously by the composer in _As the Gloaming Shadows Creep_ in _Songs from the Thirteenth Century_ (without opus number) _for Male Chorus_. The music is very tender and beautiful in expression, and these qualities atone for the fact that the song does not always show a perfect alliance between words and music; its chief merit is in the outstanding quality of the latter.
_Long Ago_ and _A Maid Sings Light_ form one of the gramophone records made for "His Master's Voice" series by Alma Gluck. This lyric soprano has sung the two MacDowell songs with sympathy and perfect phrasing. The accompaniments were played by a Mr. Bourdon, who unfortunately disregarded the composer's tone and legato indications.
OPUS 57. THIRD SONATA, NORSE, IN D MINOR, FOR PIANOFORTE.
_First Published_, 1900 (Arthur P. Schmidt).
1. _Impressively; at times with impetuous vigour._
2. _Mournfully, yet with great tenderness._
The two last sonatas, the _Norse, Op. 57_, and, the _Keltic, Op. 59_, are MacDowell's most superb achievements, banishing for ever the mistaken and ignorant assertion that he was only a miniaturist in composition. The _Norse_ sonata is separated by a wide gulf of progress from its predecessor, the _Sonata Eroica_, being greater in outlook, freer in form and altogether more strongly determined and personal in character. It has a more mature strength, nobleness and dignity, together with an inspiring and magnificent beauty and splendour of tone power. The subject of the work was one that MacDowell loved to dwell upon--the stirring tales of love and mighty heroism told in the ancient Norse sagas. The barbaric, but undoubtedly splendid spirit of those dim days seized upon his imagination as it did upon that of the English composer, Elgar, when he wrote his _Scenes from the Sagas of King Olaf_. The writing in the _Norse_ sonata is of tremendous breadth and sweep of line, only surpassed by that of the _Keltic_ sonata, (_Op. 59_), often calling forth the utmost power of which the modern pianoforte is capable and altogether ignoring the stretch of one pair of hands, which have to leap the huge chordal stretches very smartly. Notwithstanding this fullness of writing, however, the effect is always ringing and clear. The third and fourth of MacDowell's sonatas were dedicated by him to Grieg, but the printed copies of the former do not bear the inscription, though those of the _Keltic_ do so.