_ (Strings)
(Clarinets doubled below in bassoons)
(Strings)]
ragged rhythm that we Americans cannot disclaim as a nation. The working
up is spirited, and presently out of the answer grows a charming jingle
that somehow strikes home.
[Music: (Violins, with harmony in lower strings)]
It begins in the minor and has a strange, barbaric touch of cadence.
Many would acknowledge it at most as a touch of Indian mode. Yet it is
another phase of the lowered seventh. And if we care to search, we find
quite a prototype in a song like "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel." Soon
the phrase has a more familiar ring as it turns into a friendly major.
But the real second theme comes in a solo tune on the flute, in the
major,
[Music: (Solo flute)
(Strings)]
with a gait something like the first.[A] Less and less we can resist the
genuine negro quality of these melodies, and, at the same time, their
beauty and the value of the tonal treasure-house in our midst.
[Footnote A: Again it is interesting to compare here the jubilee song,
"Oh! Redeemed," in the collection of "Jubilee and Plantation Songs," of
the Oliver Ditson Company.]
The whole of the first Allegro is thus woven of three melodious and
characteristic themes in very clear sonata-form. The second, Largo,
movement is a lyric of moving pathos, with a central melody that may not
have striking traits of strict African song, and yet belongs to the type
closely associated with the negro vein of plaint or love-song.
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