In “Die Sarazenen” and “Die Schoene Alda,” two “fragments” for orchestra after the “Song of Roland,” numbered op. 30, a graver note is sounded.  These “fragments,” originally intended to form part of a “Roland” symphony, were published in 1891 in their present form, the plan for a symphony having been definitely abandoned.  “Die Sarazenen” is a transcription of the scene in which Ganelon, the traitor in Charlemagne’s camp through whose perfidy Roland met his death, swears to commit his crime.  It is a forceful conception, barbaric in colour and rhythm, and picturesquely scored.  The second fragment, “Die Schoene Alda,” is, however, a more memorable work, depicting the loveliness and the grieving of Alda, Roland’s betrothed.  In spite of its strong Wagnerian leanings, the music bears the impress of MacDowell’s own style, and it has moments of rare loveliness.  Both pieces are programmatic in bent, and, with excellent wisdom, MacDowell has quoted upon the fly-leaf of the score those portions of the “Song of Roland” from which the conception of the music sprang.

Like the “Idyls” after Goethe, the “Six Poems” after Heine (op. 31), for piano, are devoted to the embodiment of a poetic subject,—­with the difference that instead of the landscape impressionism of the Goethe studies we have a persistent impulse toward psychological suggestion.  Each of the poems which he has selected for illustration has a burden of human emotion which the music reflects with varying success.  The style is more individualised than in the Goethe pieces, and the invention is, on the whole, of a superior order.  The “Scotch Poem” (No. 2) is the most successful of the set; the

  “... schoene, kranke Frau,
  Zartdurchsichtig und marmorblass,”

and her desolate lamenting, are sharply projected, though scarcely with the power that he would have brought to bear upon the endeavour a decade later.  Less effective, but more characteristic, is “The Shepherd Boy” (No. 5).  This is almost, at moments, MacDowell in the happiest phase of his lighter vein.  The transition from F minor to major, after the fermata on the second page, is as typical as it is delectable; and the fifteen bars that follow are of a markedly personal tinge.  “From Long Ago” and “From a Fisherman’s Hut” are less good, and “The Post Wagon” and “Monologue” are disappointing—­the latter especially so, because the exquisite poem which he has chosen to enforce, the matchless lyric beginning “Der Tod, das ist die kuehle Nacht,” should, it seems, have offered an inspiring incentive.

In the “Four Little Poems” of op. 32 one encounters a piece which it is possible to admire without qualification:  I mean the music conceived as an illustration to Tennyson’s poem, “The Eagle.”  The three other numbers of this opus, “The Brook,” “Moonshine,” and “Winter,” one can praise only in measured terms—­although “Winter,” which attempts a representation of the “widow bird” and frozen landscape of Shelley’s lyric, has