Upon such a motive a new melody sings.
The delicate bliss of early love is all about, and in the lingering
close the timid ecstasies of wooing phrase. But this is a mere prelude
to the more highly stressed, vehement song of love that follows on the
same yearning motive. Here is the crowning, summing phase of the whole
poem, without a return to earlier melody save that, by significant
touch, it ends in the same expressive turn as the former languorous
song.
The first melody does not reappear, is thus a kind of background of the
scene. The whole is a dramatic lyric that moves from broader tune to a
reiterated note of sad desire, driven to a splendid height of crowned
bliss. The turbulence of early love is there; pure ardor in flaming
tongues of ecstasy; the quick turn of mood and the note of omen of the
original poem: the violence of early love and the fate that hangs over.
Berlioz has drawn the subject of his Scherzo from Mercutio's speech in
Scene 4 of the First Act of Shakespeare's tragedy. He has entitled it
"Queen Mab, or the Fairy of Dreams," and clearly intends to portray the
airy flight of Mab and her fairies. But we must doubt whether this, the
musical gem of the symphony, has a plan that is purely graphic,--rather
does it seem to soar beyond those concrete limits to an utterance of the
sense of dreams themselves in the spirit of Mercutio's conclusion:
"... I talk of dreams
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
Which is as thin of substance as the air;"
And we may add, as elusive for the enchanted mind to hold are these
pranks and brilliant parade of tonal sprites.
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