The MacDowell Colony: A Musical History of America's Premier Artists' Community (review)

Abstract

The MacDowell Colony: A Musical History of America's Premier Artists' Community. By Bridget FalconerSalkeld. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005. [xi, 467 p. ISBN 0-81085419-8. $55.] Index, bibliography, illustrations. The MacDowell Colony for creative artists in Peterborough, New Hampshire has been fostering careers of composers, writers, and visual artists for almost one hundred years. Some of most distinguished names in arts and letters are on its rolls: Aaron Copland, Thornton Wilder, Willa Gather, James Baldwin, and Leonard Bernstein number among them. The colony's underlying philosophy is based on Edward MacDowell's belief that artists working in different disciplines can benefit from contact with one another-a fact that makes it somewhat anomalous to single out music for study. Those who come to MacDowell Colony are provided a place to work undisturbed within a community of other creative artists. In addition to Copland and Bernstein, composers who have been in residence include Amy Beach, Roy Harris, Mark Blitzstein, Douglas Moore, Otto Luening, David Diamond, Lukas Foss, Louise Talma, Ned Rorem, Barbara KoIb, and Richard Danielpour, to name but a few. The colony is arguably MacDowell's greatest legacy. The was in throes of his final illness when it began in 1907. It was his widow, Marian MacDowell, who brought place to life. For this reason, colony has received scant attention from MacDowell scholars, who generally end their inquiries with composer's death in 1908. British scholar Bridget Falconer-Salkeld attempts to remedy this unjust neglect with The MacDowell Colony: A Musical History of America's Premier Artists' Community. The MacDowell Colony offers a fascinating case study in arts in twentiethcentury America. Its history illustrates early struggle of artists to forge a national cultural identity and gradual emergence of United States as a major artistic force. It is also a pre-feminist story of how one woman's devotion to her late husband sparked a movement that influenced arts in small towns and big cites across country. Marian MacDowell's network of loyal clubwomen formed base of colony's support during its formative and provides insight into an overlooked but important aspect of philanthropy in America at grassroots level. Regrettably, Falconer-Salkeld's study captures little of this. As first published full-length treatment of MacDowell Colony, it disappoints. A Scarecrow Press publication, this book is aimed at an academic audience. The first of its six chapters provides a context for formation of colony with an overview of earlier artists' communities that may have influenced its development. Cited as models are Chautauqua Institution in New York, and art colonies in Dublin and Cornish, New Hampshire and Old Lyme, Connecticut-the latter known as American Barbizon and founded at home of Florence Griswold, Marian MacDowell's cousin. The following two chapters deal respectively with origins of MacDowell Colony and its founder, Marian MacDowell. The remaining chapters offer a chronological survey of colony up to 2000 with an emphasis on composers who worked there. The author makes several missteps in her study, and they are of two kinds. There are errors that can be verified as such by consulting other sources, such as reference to Henry F. Gilbert as a black composer (p. 98), and description of Mendelssohn Glee Club of New York as the men's chorus that MacDowell had formed at Columbia and conducted for two years (p. 33). Gilbert was an early colonist and known for his use of African elements in his compositions, notably his Comedy Overture on Negro Themes of 1909. But no biographical source identifies him as African American, including Sherrill V. Martin's recent Henry F. Gilbert: A BioBibliography (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004). …