We cannot enjoy the music with furrowed brow.  It is a case where music touches Mother Earth and rejuvenates herself.  Like fairy lore and proverbs, its virtue lies in some other element than profound design.  For any form of song or verse that enshrines the spirit of a people and is tried in the forge of ages of tradition, lives on more surely than the fairest art of individual poet.

The stream is the great figure, rising from small sources in playful flutes, with light spray of harp and

[Music:  Allegro commodo non agitato lusingando (Flute with chord of pizz. strings)]

strings.  The first brook is joined by another (in clarinets) from a new direction.  Soon grows the number and the rustle of confluent waters.  The motion of the strings is wavelike, of a broader flow, though underneath we scan the several lesser currents.  Above floats now the simple, happy song, that expands

[Music:  dolce (Reeds and horns with waving strings and stroke of triangle)]

with the stream and at last reaches a glad, sunny major.

Still to the sound of flowing waters comes the forest hunt, with all the sport of trumpets and other brass.

It is descriptive music, tonal painting if you will; but the color is local or national.  The strokes are not so much of events or scenes as of a popular humor and character, which we must feel with small stress of each event.  The blowing of trumpets, the purling of streams, the swaying of trees, in primal figures, all breathe the spirit of Bohemia.

The hunt dies away; emerging from the forest the jolly sounds greet us of a peasant wedding.  The

[Music:  Tempo moderato (Reeds and strings)]

parade reaches the church in high festivity and slowly vanishes to tinkling bells.

Night has fallen; in shifted scene the stream is sparkling in the moonlight still to the quiet sweet harmonies.  But this is all background for a dance of nymphs, while a dulcet, sustained song sounds through the night.  At last, to the golden horns a faintest harmony is added of deeper brass.  Still very softly, the brass strike a quicker phrase and we seem to hear the hushed chorus of hunt with the call of trumpets, as the other brass lead in a new verse that grows lustier with the livelier song and dance, till—­with a flash we are alone with the running stream with which the dance of nymphs has somehow merged.

On it goes, in happy, ever more masterful course, a symbol of the nation’s career, surging in bright major and for a moment quieting before the mighty Rapids of St. Johann.  Here the song of the stream is nearly lost in the rush of eddies and the strife of big currents, with the high leaps of dashing spray,—­ever recurring like unceasing battle with a towering clash at the height of the tempest.  At last all meet in overpowering united torrent, suddenly to hush before the stream, at the broadest, rushes majestically along in hymnal song of exalted harmonies and triumphant melody, with joyous after-strains.