The lyric mood is regnant here, in a melody that, springing from distant soil, speaks straight to every heart, above all with the concluding refrain.  It is of the purest vein, of the primal fount, deeper than mere racial turn or trait.  Moreover, with a whole coronet of gems of modern harmony, it has a broad swing and curve that gives the soothing sense of fireside;

[Music:  Andante ma non troppo lento (Muted violins) (Sustained horns and basses with lower 8ve.; constant stroke of harp) (Clarinets)]

it bears a burden of elemental, all-contenting emotion.  In the main, the whole movement is one lyric flight.  But there come the moods of musing and rhapsodic rapture.  In a brief fugal vein is a mystic harking back to the earlier prelude.  In these lesser phrases are the foil or counter-figures for the bursts of the melody.

It is the first motive of the main tune that is the refrain in ever higher and more fervent exclamation, or in close pressing chase of voices.  Then follows a melting episode,—­some golden piece of the melody in plaintive cellos, ’neath tremulous wood or delicate choirs of strings.

But there is a second tune, hardly less moving, in dulcet group of horns amid shimmering strings and harp, with a light bucolic answer in playful reed.

[Music:  Molto tranquillo (Violins) dolce (Horns) (With arpeggic harp)]

And it has a glowing climax, too, with fiery trumpet, and dashing strings and clashing wood.

Gorgeous in the warm depth of horns sound now the returning tones of the first noble melody, with playful trill of the wood, in antiphonal song of trumpets and strings.  And there are revels of new turns of the tune (where the stirring harmony seems the best of all) that will rise to a frenzy of tintinnabulation.  A quicker counter-theme lends life and motion to all this play and plot.

A big, solemn stride of the middle strain (of main melody) precedes the last returning verse, with all the tender pathos of the beginning.

The Scherzo is wild race-feeling let loose—­national music that has not yet found a melody.  Significantly the drums begin the tune, to a dancing strain of pizzicato strings.  The tune is so elemental that the

[Music:  Allegro (Violins) (Pizz. cellos double above in violas)]

drums can really play it; the answer is equally rude,—­an arpeggic motive of strings against quick runs of the higher wood.  Out of it grows a tinge of tune with a fresh spring of dance,—­whence returns the first savage motive.  This is suddenly changed to the guise of a fugal theme, with new close, that starts a maze of disputation.

Right from the full fire of the rough dance, sad-stressed chords plunge into a moving plaint with much sweetness of melody and higher counter-melody.  Then returns again the original wild rhythm.

[Music:  Lento ma non troppo]