One special idyll there is of carolling soft horn and clarinet, where a kind of lullaby flows like a distilled essence from the gentler play—­of the heroic tune, before its last big verse, with a mighty flow of

[Music:  dolce e tranquillo (Horn) (Two horns) (Clarinet)]

sequence, and splendidly here the second figure crowns the pageant.  At the passionate height, over long ringing chord, the latter sings a sonorous line in lengthened notes of the wood and horns.  The first climax is here, in big coursing strains, then it slowly lulls, with a new verse of the idyll, to a final hush.

The second movement is a brief lyric with one main melody, sung at first by a solo cello amidst a weaving of muted strings; later it is taken up by the first violins.  The solo cello returns for a further song in duet with the violins, where the violas, too, entwine their melody, or the cello is joined by the violins.

Now the chief melody returns for a richer and varied setting with horns and woodwind.  At last the first violins, paired in octave with the cello, sing the full melody in a madrigal of lesser strains.

An epilogue answers the prologue of the beginning.

Equally brief is the true Scherzo, though merely entitled Allegretto,—­a dainty frolic without the heavy brass, an indefinable conceit of airy fantasy, with here and there a line of sober melody peeping between the mischievous pranks.  There is no contrasting Trio in the middle; but just before the end comes a quiet pace as of mock-gravity, before a final scamper.

A preluding fantasy begins in the mood of the early Allegro; a wistful melody of the clarinet plays more slowly between cryptic reminders of the first theme of the symphony.  In sudden Allegro risoluto over rumbling bass of strings, a mystic call of horns, harking far back, spreads its echoing ripples all about till it rises in united tones, with a clear, descending answer, much like the original first motive.  The latter now continues in the bass in large and smaller pace beneath a new tuneful treble of violins, while the call still roams a free course in the wind.  Oft repeated is this resonation in paired harmonies, the lower phrase like an “obstinate bass.”

Leaving the fantasy, the voices sing in simple choral lines a hymnal song in triumphal pace, with firm cadence and answer, ending at length in the descending

[Music:  Allegro risoluto deciso (Strings, with added wood and horns)]

phrase.  The full song is repeated, from the entrance of the latter, as though to stress the two main melodies.  The marching chorus halts briefly when the clarinet begins again a mystic verse on the strain of the call, where the descending phrase is intermingled in the horns and strings.

There is a new horizon here.  We can no longer speak with half-condescension of Italian simplicity, though another kind of primal feeling is mingled in a breadth of symphonic vein.  We feel that our Italian poet has cast loose his leading strings and is revealing new glimpses through the classic form.