Читать книгу The Goose-step: A Study of American Education онлайн

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Then MacDowell, the composer. Edward MacDowell was the first authentic man of genius I met; he is the only American musician whose work has won fame abroad. He was a man as well as an artist, and his courses in general musical culture were a rare delight. After much urging, he consented to play us parts of his own works, and discuss them with us. Needless to say, this was not orthodox academic procedure, and the college authorities, who do not recognize genius less than a hundred years away, would not give proper credits for work with MacDowell. The composer’s beautiful dream of a center of musical education came to nothing, and he retired, broken-hearted. As I described the tragedy at the time, he ran into Nicholas Murray Butler and was killed.

Finally, George Edward Woodberry, who was in the field of letters what MacDowell was in music, a master not merely of criticism but of creation; also a charming spirit and a friend to students. He gave a course in what he called comparative literature, and made us acquainted with Plato, Cervantes, Dante, Ariosto, Spenser, and Shelley. He was a truly liberalizing influence, and so popular among the men that the Columbia machine hated him heartily. I was taking Brander Matthews’ course at the same time as Woodberry’s, and would hear Matthews sneer at Woodberry’s “idealism,” and at his methods of teaching. A year later Woodberry was forced out, under circumstances which I shall presently narrate.