An epilogue of wistful
song leads to the repeated melodies.
The main figure of the plot that follows is the first melody, now in
slow, graceful notes, now in feverish pace, though the brief (second)
motive moves constantly here and there. A darkest descent follows into
an Avernus of deep brooding on the legend, with an ascending path of the
brief, nervous phrase and a reverse fall, that finally wears out its own
despair and ends in a sombre verse of the prelude, with new shades of
melancholy, then plunges into an overwhelming burst on the sighing
phrase. Thence the path of brooding begins anew; but it is now
ascendant, on the dual pulse of the poignant motto and the brief,
nervous motive. The whole current of passion is thus uttered in the
prelude strain that at the outset was pregnant with feeling. At the
crisis it is answered or rather interwoven with a guise of the second
theme, in hurried pace, chanted by stentorian brass and wood in
hallooing chorus that reaches a high exultation. To be sure the Russian
at his gladdest seems tinged with sense of fate. So from the single
burst we droop again. But the gloom is pierced by brilliant
shafts,--herald calls (of brass and wood) that raise the mood of the
returning main melody, and in their continuous refrain add a buoyant
stimulus. And the verse of quicker figures has a new fire and ferment.
All absent is the former descent of minor tones. Instead, in solemn hush
of tempest, without the poignant touch, the tranquil second melody
returns with dulcet answer of strings.
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