Simple as the Allegretto appears in its suggestion of halting dance, the intent in the episodes is of the subtlest.  The slow trip of strings and harp is soon given a new meaning with the melody of English horn.  Throughout we are somehow divided between pure dance and a more thoughtful muse.  In the first departure to an episode in major, seems to sing the essence of the former melody in gently murmuring strings, where later the whole chorus are drawn in.  The song moves on clear thread and wing right out of the mood of the dance-tune; but the very charm lies in the mere outer change of guise.  And so the second episode is still far from all likeness with the first dance beyond a least sense of the old trip that does appear here and there.  It is all clearly a true scheme of variations, the main theme disguised beyond outer semblance, yet faithfully present throughout in the essential rhythm and harmony.

In the Finale, Allegro non troppo, we are really clear, at the outset, of the toils of musing melancholy.

[Music:  Allegro non troppo Dolce cantabile]

After big bursts of chords, a tune rolls pleasantly along, dolce cantabile, in basses of wood and strings.  Expressive after-phrases abound, all in the same jolly mood, until the whole band break boisterously on the simple song, with a new sonorous phrase of basses.  Then, in sudden remove, sounds the purest bit of melody of all the symphony, in gentlest tones

[Music:  Dolce cantabile (In the brass)]

of brass (trumpet, trombone and tuba).  But, though in complete recoil from the rhythmic energy of Allegro theme, it is even farther from the reflective mood than the latter.  It shows, in this very contrast, the absence of the true lyric in the meditative vein, frequent with Cesar Franck.  The burst of melody blossoms ever fairer.  In its later musing the tune browses in the bass.  A waving phrase grows in the violins, which continues with strange evenness through the entrance of new song where we are surprised by the strange fitness of the Allegretto melody.  And the second phase of the latter follows as if it belonged here.  So, almost listless, without a hair of rhythmic change (les temps ont toujours la meme valeur), the Finale theme sings again most softly in the strings.  It has, to be sure, lost all of its color, without the original throb of accompanying sounds.  The phase of the movement is a shadowy procession of former ideas, united in the dreamy haze that enshrouds them.  The stir that now begins is not of the first pale hue of thought, rather the vein of big discussion, brewing a storm that breaks finally in full blast on the gentle melody (of the brass) transfigured in ringing triumph, in all the course of the song.  Nor is the succeeding phase the mystic habit of our poet; it is a mere farther digestion of the meat of the melody that leads once more to a height of climax whence we return to first course of themes, tuneful afterphrase and all, with the old happy motion.  The counterpoint here is the mere joyous ringing of many strains all about.