There are pages of epical breadth and power, passages of elemental vigour and ferocity--passages, again, of an exquisite tenderness and poignancy.

Of the three movements which the work comprises, the first makes the most lasting impression, although the second (the slow movement) has a haunting subject, which is recalled episodically in the final movement in a passage of unforgettable beauty and character.
With the publication, in 1901, of the "Keltic" sonata (his fourth, op.
59),[15] MacDowell achieved a conclusive demonstration of his capacity as a creative musician of unquestionable importance.

Not before had he given so convincing an earnest of the larger aspect of his genius: neither in the three earlier sonatas, in the "Sea Pieces," nor in the "Indian" suite, had he attained an equal magnitude, an equal scope and significance.

Nowhere else in his work are the distinguishing traits of his genius so strikingly disclosed--the breadth and reach of imagination, the magnetic vitality, the richness and fervour, the conquering poetic charm.

Here you will find a beauty which is as "the beauty of the men that take up spears and die for a name," no less than "the beauty of the poets that take up harp and sorrow and the wandering road"-- a harp shaken with a wild and piercing music, a sorrow that is not of to-day, but of a past when dreams were actual and imperishable, and men lived the tales of beauty and of wonder which now are but a discredited and fading memory.
[15] Dedicated, like the "Norse," to Grieg.
It was a fortunate, if not an inevitable, event, in view of his temperamental affiliations with the Celtic genius, that MacDowell should have been made aware of the suitability for musical treatment of the ancient heroic chronicles of the Gaels, and that he should have gone for his inspiration, in particular, to the legends comprised in the famous Cycle of the Red Branch: that wonderful group of epics which comprises, among other tales, the story of the matchless Deirdre,--whose loveliness was such, so say the chroniclers, that "not upon the ridge of earth was there a woman so beautiful,"-- and the life and adventures and glorious death of the incomparable Cuchullin.