elements.  Even here the former separate motive sounds, and so in the further turn of the song (espressivo dolente) on new thread.

The melody that sings (espressivo ma tranquillo) may well stand for “love, the glow of dawn in every heart.”  Before the storm, both great motives (of love and death) sound together very beautifully, as in

[Music:  espress. ma tranquillo dolce. (Horns and lower strings, with arpeggic harp and violins)]

Tennyson’s poem.  The storm that blasts the romance begins with the same fateful phrase.  It is all about, even inverted, and at the crisis it sings with the fervor of full-blown song.  At the lull the soft guise reappears, faintly, like a sweet memory.

The Allegretto pastorale is clear from the preface.  After we are lulled, soothed, caressed and all but entranced by these new impersonal sounds, then, as if the sovereign for whom all else were preparing, the song of love seeks its recapitulated verse.  Indeed here is the real full song.  Is it that in the memory lies the reality, or at least the realization?

Out of the dream of love rouses the sudden alarm of brass (Allegro marziale animato), with a new war-tune fashioned of the former soft disguised motive.  The air of fate still hangs heavy over all.  In spirited retorts the martial madrigal proceeds, but it is not all mere war and courage.  Through the clash of strife break in the former songs, the love-theme in triumph and the first expressive strain in tempestuous joy.  Last of all the fateful original motto rings once more in serene, contained majesty.

On the whole, even with so well-defined a program, and with a full play of memory, we cannot be quite sure of a fixed association of the motive.  It is better to view the melodic episodes as subjective phases, arising from the tenor of the poem.

TASSO

Liszt’s “Tasso” is probably the earliest celebration, in pure tonal form, of the plot of man’s suffering and redemption, that has been so much followed that it may be called the type of the modern symphony.[A] In this direct influence the “Tasso” poem has been the most striking of all of Liszt’s creations.

[Footnote A:  We may mention such other works of Liszt as “Mazeppa” and the “Faust” Symphony; the third symphony of Saint-Saens; Strauss’ tone poem “Death and Transfiguration”; Volbach’s symphony, besides other symphonies such as a work by Carl Pohlig.  We may count here, too, the Heldenlied by Dvorak, and Strauss’ Heldenleben (see Vol.  II).]

The following preface of the composer accompanies the score: 

“In the year 1849 the one hundredth anniversary of Goethe’s birth was celebrated throughout Germany; the theatre in Weimar, where we were at the time, marked the 28th of August by a performance of ‘Tasso.’

“The tragic fate of the unfortunate bard served as a text for the two greatest poets