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48 In Modern Music-Makers: Contemporary American Composers, a collection of interview-based writings published by Madeleine Goss in 1952, the author quoted Marion Bauer (1882–1955): “To Mrs. Edward MacDowell, I owe a debt of gratitude for having founded a haven where many other composers, writers, and painters have shared with me the extraordinary opportunity and privilege of doing creative work in peaceful, stimulating and beautiful surroundings.”1 While the subject of Bauer’s tribute was clearly Marian MacDowell , her reference to the colony as a “haven” with “peaceful, stimulating and beautiful surroundings” spoke to the impact the place had on her, as well. Like for Amy Beach, the chance to work uninterrupted in the idyllic setting was an “extraordinary opportunity” for Bauer. Her acknowledgment of the power of the natural place is, however, unusual, because unlike Beach, whose personal papers and compositions offer multiple references to the important role the natural world played in her music and life, Marion Bauer seems not to have felt compelled to single out “nature” on its own for comment in any other context. Without recurring acknowledgments, however, the place was clearly inspiring to Bauer. As Goss further explained: “One year ‘out of sheer joy of being at the colony’ she was inspired the moment of her arrival. Not waiting to unpack her trunk, she borrowed music-paper from a fellow-colonist and at once wrote down a Prelude–last in her group of Six Preludes for the Piano.”2 There are no records where Bauer writes of her eagerness to capture the colony’s unique sounds or soak up its inspiring scents or sights, despite the fact that a number of her works written after her initial trip refer to nature. In Bauer’s music, nature functions more as a source for atmospheric musical 3 Marion Bauer � Marion Bauer 49 responses than as an archive of specific sonic events. It is there but doesn’t require worship, identification, approbation, or appropriation. By juxtaposing Beach and Bauer, readers can begin to appreciate the range of composer responses not only to specific environments, but also to nature more generally. Many of Marion Bauer’s earliest compositions, those from the 1910s and 1920s, were written for voice, chorus, or piano solo in a tonal idiom similar to Beach’s works, and a large number of them, including some composed prior to her first residency at the MacDowell Colony in 1919, refer to nature in their titles. Among the most noteworthy is probably “Up the Ocklawaha” (op. 6), for violin and piano written for and dedicated to Maud Powell, which she composed in 1912. It was inspired by a poem the concertizing violinist sent to Bauer describing her otherworldly encounter as she toured in Florida on the eponymous “bark-stained . . . tortuous river.”3 We will come back to this work. Other nature-related pieces include “Fair Daffodils” (1914), a piece for women’s chorus based upon R. Herrick’s poem “To Daffodils”; and “The Lay of the Four Winds” (op. 8) written in 1915, with poetry by C. Y. Rice for male chorus. Beginning with her first residency at the MacDowell, still more naturerelated titles appeared in Bauer’s works list:4 in 1919 she set text from Oscar Wilde’s poem “In the Forest” in her song “My Faun,” and in 1921, the summer of Beach’s first residency, Bauer composed “Night in the Woods” using words from E. R. Sill’s poem “Night in Peace.”5 This is the same poet with whom Beach made her California birding trip as a child, and whose poem “The Thrush” she set in 1891. Bauer could easily have read Sill’s poetry in a number of magazines–The Atlantic Monthly and the Century Magazine are just two–or she might have learned of the poet from Beach, whom she met that year.6 Once again, Bauer left no commentary. The year 1921 also saw the publication of the vocal solo “The Epitaph of a Butterfly,” which set poetry by Thomas Walsh, and the following year “A Parable (The Blade of Grass)” with words by Stephen Crane. In selecting such poems, Bauer, like her nineteenth-century, women nature-writing forebears, focused on small, delicate, ephemeral manifestations of nature that were close to home and easily anthropomorphized. As Beach had formed a close alliance with her companion thrush, Bauer, through Herrick, empathized with the daffodils and mourned their short season: “Fair Daffodils, we weep to see / You haste away...

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