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Edward MacDowell: Silver Clouds, Op.28 No.4

437 views · Published 8 March 2017 · 3:12 · Indexed 20 October 2026

Channel: PSearPianist · 2017 · Music

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Phillip Sear plays a piece from an 1887 suite - '6 Idyls after Goethe' - by the American composer Edward MacDowell (1860-1908).
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Edward MacDowell  (1860-1908) needs no special introduction from me.  You can read about him on his Wikipedia page:  http://bit.ly/2ld5ACM .  He was the pre-eminent US composer of the last years of the 19th century, and is still famous for his piano piece 'To a Wild Rose' and for his studies and piano concertos, which occasionally receive outings in public.  However, most of his music is ignored, and until recently much of it was very hard to get hold of internationally.  The set of pieces from which this comes was first published in Germany in 1887 under the title 'Idylles', and the individual pieces - though preceded by verses from Goethe - were untitled.  However, when a revised edition was published in America in 1901, they were repackaged.  Each piece was given a title, and the fairly literal translations of the Goethe extracts from the original were replaced by very sentimentalized versions prepared by MacDowell himself!

This piece is prefaced by extracts from Goethe's poem 'Leichte Silberwolken schweben':

"Leichte Silberwolken schweben
Durch die erst erwärmten Lüfte,
Mild, von Schimmer sanft umgeben,
Blickt die Sonne durch die Düfte.

Leise wallt und drängt die Welle
Sich am reichen Ufer hin;
Und wie reingewaschen helle,
Schwankend hin und her und hin,
Spiegelt sich das junge Grün."

Here is MacDowell's translation:

"Silver Clouds are lightly sailing 
Through the drowsy, trembling Air,
And the golden summer sunshine 
Casts a glory everywhere.
Softly sob and sigh the billows, 
As they dream in shadows sweet, 
And the swaying reeds and rushes 
Kiss the mirror at their feet"

Thumbnail image by David Tovar on Unsplash ( https://tinyurl.com/y6xmlk9q ).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------- Played by Phillip Sear
http://www.psear.co.uk (Email:  [email protected]  
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