For nationalism in music has two very different bearings.  The concrete elements of folk-song, rhythm and scale, as they are more apparent, are far less important.  The true significance lies in the motive of an unexpressed national idea that presses irresistibly towards fulfilment.  Here is the main secret of the Russian achievement in modern music,—­as of other nations like the Finnish.  It is the cause that counts.  Though Russian song has less striking traits than Hungarian or Spanish, it has blossomed in a far richer harvest of noble works of art.

Facile, fluent, full of color, Tschaikowsky seems equipped less for subjective than for lyric and dramatic utterance, as in his “Romeo and Juliet” overture.  In the “Manfred” Symphony we may see the most fitting employment of his talent.  Nor is it unlikely that the special correspondence of treatment and subject may cause this symphony to survive the others, may leave it long a rival of Schumann’s “Manfred” music.

With Tschaikowsky feeling is always highly stressed, never in a certain natural poise.  He quite lacks the noble restraint of the masters who, in their symphonic lyrics, wonderfully suggest the still waters that run deep.

Feeling with Tschaikowsky was frenzy, violent passion, so that with all abandon there is a touch of the mechanical in his method.  Emotion as the content of highest art must be of greater depth and more quiet flow.  And it is part or a counterpart of an hysterical manner that it reacts to a cold and impassive mood,—­such as we feel in the Andante of the Fourth Symphony.

The final quality for symphonic art is, after all, less the chance flash of inspiration than a big view, a broad sympathy, a deep well of feeling that comes only with great character.

Nay, there is a kind of peril in the symphony for the poet of uncertain balance from the betrayal of his own temper despite his formal plan.  Through all the triumph of a climax as in the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, we may feel a subliminal sadness that proves how subtle is the expression in music of the subjective mood.  There is revealed not the feeling the poet is conscious of, but, below this, his present self, and in the whole series of his works, his own personal mettle.  What the poet tries to say is very different from what he does say.  In a symphony, as in many a frolic, the tinge of latent melancholy will appear.

SYMPHONY NO. 4

Reverting to a great and fascinating question as to the content of art, we may wonder whether this is not the real tragic symphony of Tschaikowsky, in the true heroic sense, in a view where the highest tragedy is not measured by the wildest lament.  There may be a stronger sounding of lower depths with a firmer touch (with less of a conscious kind of abandon),—­whence the recoil to serene cheer will be the greater.

There is surely a magnificent aspiration in the first Allegro, a profound knell of destiny and a rare ring of triumph.  Underlying all is the legend of trumpets, Andante sostenuto (3/4), with a dim touch