The climax of feeling is uttered in a fiery burst of all the brass in
the former dulcet refrain from the motto. In full sweep of gathering
host it flows in unhindered song. Somehow by a slight turn, the tune is
transformed into the alluring melody of the second theme. When the
former returns, we feel that both strains are singing as part of a
single song and that the two subjects are blended and reconciled in
rapture of content.
A new mystic play of the quicker motto, answered by the second theme,
leads to an overpowering blast of the motto in slowest notes of brass
and reed, ending in a final fanfare.
All lightness is the Scherzo, though we cannot escape a Russian vein of
minor even in the dance. A rapid melody has a kind of perpetual motion
in the strings, with mimicking echoes in the wood. But the strange part
is how the natural accompanying voice below (in the bassoon) makes a
haunting melody of
[Music: _Vivo_
(Violins doubled below in violas)
(Bassoon)
(_Pizz._ cellos)]
its own,--especially when they fly away to the major. As we suspected,
the lower proves really the principal song as it winds on in the
languorous English horn or in the higher reed. Still the returning dance
has now the whole stage in a long romp with strange peasant thud of the
brass on the second beat. Then the song rejoins the dance, just as in
answering glee, later in united chorus.
A quieter song (that might have been called the Trio) has still a
clinging flavor of the soil,--as of a folk-ballad, that is not lost with
the later madrigal nor with the tripping figure that runs along.
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