The fugue begins in muted strings, like plaintive human voices, though wood and brass here and there light up the phrases.  Now the full bass of horns and wood strikes the descending course of theme, while higher strings and wood soar in rising stress of (sighing) grief.

[Music:  (In double higher 8ves.) With lower 8ves. (Strings, with enforcing and answering wind)]

A hymnal verse of the theme enters in the wood answered by impetuous strings on a coursing phrase.  The antiphonal song rises with eager stress of themal attack.  A quieter elegy leads to another burst, the motive above, the insistent sigh below.  The climax of fugue returns to the heroic main plaint below, with sighing answers above, all the voices of wood and brass enforcing the strings.

Then the fugue turns to a transfigured phase; the theme rings triumphant retorts in golden horns and in a masterful unison of the wood; the wild answer runs joyfully in lower strings, while the higher are strumming like celestial harps.  The whole is transformed to a big song of praise ever in higher harmonies.  The theme flows on in ever varying thread, amidst the acclaiming tumult.

But the heavenly heights are not reached by a single leap.  Once more we sink to sombre depths not of the old rejection, but of a chastened, wistful wonderment.  The former plaintive chant returns, in slower, contained pace, broken by phrases of mourning recitative, with the old sigh.  And a former brief strain of simple aspiration is supported by angelic harps.  In gentle ascent we are wafted to the acclaim of heavenly (treble) voices in the Magnificat.  A wonderful utterance, throughout the scene of Purgatory, there is of a chastened, almost spiritual grief for the sin that cannot be undone, though it is not past pardon.

The bold design of the final Praise of the Almighty was evidently conceived in the main as a service.  An actual depiction, or a direct expression (such as is attempted in the prologue of Boito’s Mefistofele) was thereby avoided.  The Holy of Holies is screened from view by a priestly ceremony,—­by the mask of conventional religion.  Else we must take the composer’s personal conception of such a climax as that of an orthodox Churchman.  And then the whole work, with all its pathos and humanity, falls to the level of liturgy.

The words of invisible angel-chorus are those of the blessed maid trusting in God her savior, on a theme for which we are prepared by preluding choirs of harps, wood and strings.  It is sung on an ancient Church tone that in its height approaches the mode of secular song.  With all the power of broad rhythm, and fulness of harmony and volume, the feeling is of conventional worship.  With all the purity of shimmering harmonies the form is ecclesiastical in its main lines and depends upon liturgic symbols for its effect and upon the faith of the listener for its appeal.