Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 246 pages of information about Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies.

Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 246 pages of information about Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies.

harp completes the chorus of hurrying voices.  Now with full power and swing the main notes ring in sturdy brass, while all around is a rushing and swirling (of harps and bells and wood and strings).  And still more furious grows the flight, led by the unison violins.

A mischievous mood of impish frolic gives a new turn of saucy gait.  In the jovial answer, chorussed in simple song, seems a revel of all the spirits of rivers and streams.

At the top of a big extended period the trumpet sends a shrill defiant blast.

But it is not merely in power and speed,—­more in an infinite variety of color, and whim of tune and rhythmic harmony, that is expressed the full gamut of disporting spirits.  Later, at fastest speed of tripping harp and wood, the brass ring out that first, insistent summons, beneath the same eerie harmonies—­and the uncanny descending chords answer as before.  But alas! the summons will not work the other way.  Despite the forbidding command and all the other exorcising the race goes madly on.

And now, if we are intent on the story, we may see the rising rage of the apprentice and at last the fatal stroke that seemingly hems and almost quells the flood.  But not quite!  Slowly (as at first) the hinges start in motion.  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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Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.