A MATURED IMPRESSIONIST With the completion and production of his "Indian" suite for orchestra (op.

48) MacDowell came, in a measure, into his own.

Mr.Philip Hale, writing apropos of a performance of the suite at a concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra[12] in December, 1897, did not hesitate to describe the work as "one of the noblest compositions of modern times." Elsewhere he wrote concerning it: "The thoughts are the musical thoughts of high imagination; the expression is that of the sure and serene master.

There are here no echoes of Raff, or Wagner, or Brahms, men that have each influenced mightily the musical thought of to-day.

There is the voice of one composer: a virile, tender voice that does not stammer, does not break, does not wax hysterical: the voice of a composer that not only must pour out that which has accumulated within him, but knows all the resources of musical oratory--in a word, the voice of MacDowell." [12] The suite is dedicated to this Orchestra and its former conductor, Mr.Emil Paur.
MacDowell has derived the greater part of the thematic substance of the suite, as he acknowledges in a prefatory note, from melodies of the North American Indians, with the exception of a few subsidiary themes of his own invention.