ABSTRACT
The nineteenth-century revival of interest in chivalry in general and in King Arthur in particular manifested itself in some way in almost every imaginable form: architecture, stained glass, sculpture, painting, poetry, fiction, even the Boy Scout movement. The case of Edward MacDowell suggests that, in music as in the other arts, a growing sense of loss marked the Arthurian twilight. MacDowell's mentors were important members of the New German School. The controversy over whether music can express extra musical ideas was not of Wagner's making, having been a subject of heated discussion since the eighteenth century; MacDowell's statements about musical meaning, however, seem to express some of the elements of both schools of thought, thus reflecting the struggle and confusion of the debate. By the end of the nineteenth century that Arthur was still noble and heroic, but his idealism was doomed to failure.
