Free MacDowell sheet music
2 MacDowell scores on Artform's shelf, ordered easiest to read first. Every score here is public domain, free to read, print and keep.
Open the sheet music libraryEdward MacDowell (1860-1908)
American composer who trained in Paris and Frankfurt, was praised by Liszt, and came home to be called the first American composer of consequence, a label he disliked. The small pieces are the ones that lasted: To a Wild Rose was written in a few minutes and thrown in the bin, and rescued from it by his wife. After his death she turned their New Hampshire farm into a retreat where artists could work undisturbed, and the MacDowell Colony has been giving writers and composers that quiet ever since.
Start with these
The easiest MacDowell on the shelf, in order. Nothing here is graded and nobody is ranked: the shelf simply puts the pieces that ask less of your hands before the ones that ask more.
How the reader works
Each score opens as engraved notation you can read from the stand, and it plays: hear the piece first, then slow it down and loop the bar that is not working. There is nothing to install and no account to make. When you want paper, print it.
Every file is MusicXML, so MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale and Dorico open them too.
Where to go next
If you are learning MacDowell rather than only reading, the scale pages cover fingering in every key, the chord pages spell out every chord, and the symbol dictionary explains any mark on the page you do not recognise.