In a Haunted Forest

From Wind Repertory Project
Edward MacDowell

Edward MacDowell (trans. Donald Patterson)


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Subtitle: From Suite No. 1, Opus 42


General Info

Year: 1891 /
Duration: c. 5:25
Difficulty: (see Ratings for explanation)
Original Medium: Orchestra
Publisher: U.S. Marine Band
Cost: Score and Parts - Unknown


Instrumentation

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Errata

None discovered thus far.


Program Notes

Edward MacDowell was an American composer and contemporary ofJohn Philip Sousa. Although born and raised in New York, MacDowell received his advanced training in piano and composition in Europe. He spent nearly a decade in France and Germany and, while there, became closely acquainted with Franz Liszt, who became a strong and vocal supporter of MacDowell’s music. MacDowell returned to the United States in 1888, and his European “stamp of approval” gave him considerable stature in an American musical culture that was still relatively young and insecure.

Perhaps best known for his piano miniatures, short works with poetic and evocative titles, he was also an accomplished orchestral composer, as demonstrated by his Suite No. 1, Opus 42, from which In a Haunted Forest was extracted. MacDowell’s means of establishing mood and atmosphere was similar to those of the French Impressionist composers such as Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. It is not difficult to ascertain the mood MacDowell sought to establish in this brief work, which begins quietly, against a recurring heartbeat that increases in speed as the woods come alive with the shrieking spirits and malevolent forces one would expect to find in any good nineteenth-century ghost story.

- Program Note from U.S. Marine Band concert program, 26 August 2021


Media

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State Ratings

None discovered thus far.


Performances

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  • United States Marine Band (Washington, D.C.) (Jason K. Fettig, conductor) - 26 August 2021
  • United States Marine Band (Washington, D.C.) (Michael J. Colburn, conductor) – 5 January 2014


Works for Winds by This Composer


Resources