This is continually apparent in "The Lover" and "Sweetheart," fugitively so in the "Prologue," and, in an irresistible degree, in the exceedingly poetic and deeply felt "Epilogue"-- one of the most typical and beautiful of MacDowell's smaller works.

The music of these pieces is, as with other of his earlier works that he has since revised, confusing to the observer who attempts to place it among his productions in the order suggested by its opus number.

For although in the list of his published works the "Marionettes" follow immediately on the heels of the Concert Study and "Les Orientales" the form in which they are now most generally known represents the much later period of the "Keltic" sonata--a fact which will, however, be sufficiently evident to anyone who studies the two versions carefully enough to perceive the difference between more or less experimental craftsmanship and ripe and heedful artistry.

The observer will notice in these pieces, incidentally, the abandonment of the traditional Italian terms of expression and the substitution of English words and phrases, which are used freely and with adroitness to indicate every shade of the composer's meaning.

In place of the stereotyped terms of the music-maker's familiarly limited vocabulary, we have such a system of direct and elastic expression as Schumann adopted.