And now, new horror! Where there was one, there are now
two ghostly figures scurrying to redoubled disaster. Again and again the
stern call rings out, answered by the wildest tumult of all. The shouts
for the master's aid seem to turn to shrieks of despair. At last a
mighty call overmasters and stills the storm. Nothing is heard but the
first fitful phrases; now they seem mere echoes, instead of
forewarnings. We cannot fail to see the fine parallel, how the masterful
command is effective as was the similar call at the beginning.
Significantly brief is the ending, at once of the story and of the
music. In the brevity lies the point of the plot: in the curt dismissal
of the humbled spirit, at the height of his revel, to his place as broom
in the corner. Wistful almost is the slow vanishing until the last
chords come like the breaking of a fairy trance.
CHAPTER X
TSCHAIKOWSKY
The Byron of music is Tschaikowsky for a certain alluring melancholy and
an almost uncanny flow and sparkle. His own personal vein deepened the
morbid tinge of his national humor.
We cannot ignore the inheritance from Liszt, both spiritual and musical.
More and more does the Hungarian loom up as an overmastering influence
of his own and a succeeding age. It seems as if Liszt, not Wagner, was
the musical prophet who struck the rock of modern pessimism, from which
flowed a stream of ravishing art. The national current in Tschaikowsky's
music was less potent than with his younger compatriots; or at least it
lay farther beneath the surface.
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