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Goepp, Philip H., 1864-1936

"Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies"


[Music: (Brass with quicker figures in strings and wood)]
There are various lesser motives, such as a minor scale of ascending
thirds, and a group of crossing figures that seem a guise of the first
motive. To be sure the picture lies less in the separate figures than in
the mingled color and bustle. Special in its humor is a soft gliding or
creeping phrase of three voices against a constant trip of cellos.
After a climax of the first motive a frolicking theme begins (in English
horn and violas). If we were forced to guess, we could see here the
dandy devil, with pointed mustachios, frisking about. It is probably
another guise of the second motive which presently appears in the bass.
A little later, _dolce amabile_ in a madrigal of wood and strings, we
may see the gentlemanly devil, the gallant. With a crash of chord and a
roll of cymbals re-enters the first motive, to flickering harmonies of
violins, harp and flutes, taken up by succeeding voices, all in the
whole-tone scale. Hurrying to a clamorous height, the pace glides into a
_Movimento di Valzer_, in massed volume, with the frolicking figure in
festive array.
To softest tapping of lowest strings and drums, a shadow of the second
figure passes here and there, with a flash of harp. Soon, in returning
merriment, it is coursing in unison strings (against an opposite motion
in the wood).
At the height of revel, as the strings are holding a trembling chord, a
sprightly Gallic tune of the street pipes in the reed, with intermittent
flash of the harp, and, to be sure, an unfamiliar tang of harmonies and
strange perversions of the tune.


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