Indeed, I think it would not be extravagant to say that he has given us here the noblest musical incarnation of the Arthurian legend which we have.

It is singular, by the way, how frequently one is impelled to use the epithet "noble" in praising MacDowell's work; in reference to the "Sonata Eroica" it has an emphatic aptness, for nobility is the keynote of this music.

If the work, as a whole, has not the dynamic power of the "Tragica," the weight and gravity of substance, it is both a lovelier and a more lovable work, and it is everywhere more significantly accented.

He has written few things more luxuriantly beautiful than the "Guinevere" movement, nothing more elevated and ecstatic than the apotheosis which ends the work.

The diction throughout is richer and more variously contrasted than in the earlier work, and his manipulation of the form is more elastic.
Apparent as is the advance of the "Eroica" over its predecessor, the difference between these and the two later sonatas--the "Norse" and the "Keltic"-- is even more marked.