It is not a needlessly harsh asseveration to say that, until MacDowell began to put forth his more individual works, our music had been palpably, almost frankly, dependent: an undisguised and naive transplantation, made rather feeble and anaemic in the process, of European growths.

The result was admirable, in its way, praiseworthy, in its way--and wholly negligible.
The music of MacDowell was, almost from the first, in a wholly different case.

In its early phases it, too, was imitative, reflective.

MacDowell returned to America, after a twelve years' apprenticeship to European influences, in 1888, bringing with him his symphonic poems, "Hamlet and Ophelia" and "Lancelot and Elaine," his unfinished "Lamia," his two orchestral paraphrases of scenes from the Song of Roland, two concertos, and numerous songs and piano pieces.
Not greatly important music, this, measured beside that which he afterward put forth; but possessing an individual profile, a savour, a tang, which gave it an immediately recognised distinction.

A new voice spoke out of it, a fresh and confident, an eloquent and forceful, voice.