[Footnote A:  Prefixed are the familiar lines: 

    “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
    Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”]

Tschaikowsky’s setting is a “symphony in four pictures, or scenes (en quatre tableaux), after Byron’s dramatic poem.”  In the general design and spirit there is much of the feeling of Berlioz’s “Fantastic” Symphony, though the manner of the music shows no resemblance whatever.  There is much more likeness to Liszt’s “Faust” Symphony, in that the pervading recurrence of themes suggests symbolic labels.  Moreover, in the very character of many of the motives, there is here a striking line of descent.

Lento lugubre, the first scene or picture, begins with a theme in basses of reeds: 

[Music:  Lento lugubre (Woodwind) (Strings)]

with later pizzicato figure of low strings.

An answering strain is one of the most important of all the melodies: 

[Music]

On these, a bold conflict and climax is reared.  If we care to indulge in the bad habit of calling names, we might see “Proud Ambition” in the first motives, intertwined with sounds of sombre discontent.  The pace grows animando,—­piu mosso; moderato molto.  Suddenly Andante sings a new, expressive song, with a dulcet cheer of its own, rising to passionate periods and a final height whence, Andante con duolo, a loudest chorus of high wood and strings, heralded and accompanied by martial tremolo of low wood, horns, basses, and drums, sound the fateful chant that concludes the first scene, and, toward the close of the work, sums the main idea.

[Music:  (Strings and flutes)
(Basses, wood and horns)
(Same continuing rhythm)]

The apparition of the Witch of the Alps is pictured in daintiest, sparkling play of strings and wood, with constant recurrence of mobile figures above and below.  It seems as if the image of the fountain is fittest and most tempting for mirroring in music.  Perhaps the most beautiful, the most haunting, of all the “Manfred” music of Schumann is this same scene of the Witch of the Alps.

Here, with Tschaikowsky, hardly a single note of brass intrudes on this perpetuum mobile of light, plashing spray until, later, strains that hark back to the first scene cloud the clear brilliancy of the cascade.  Now the play of the waters is lost in the new vision, and a limpid song glides in the violins, with big rhythmic chords of harps, is taken up in clarinets, and carried on by violins in new melodic verse, con tenerezza e molto espressione.  Then the whole chorus sing the tune in gentle volume.  As it dies away, the music of the falling waters plash as before.  The returning song has phases of varying sadness and passion.  At the most vehement height,—­and here, if we choose, we may see the stern order to retire,—­the fatal chant is shrieked by full chorus in almost unison fierceness.