ragged rhythm that we Americans cannot disclaim as a nation.  The working up is spirited, and presently out of the answer grows a charming jingle that somehow strikes home.

[Music:  (Violins, with harmony in lower strings)]

It begins in the minor and has a strange, barbaric touch of cadence.  Many would acknowledge it at most as a touch of Indian mode.  Yet it is another phase of the lowered seventh.  And if we care to search, we find quite a prototype in a song like “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel.”  Soon the phrase has a more familiar ring as it turns into a friendly major.  But the real second theme comes in a solo tune on the flute, in the major,

[Music:  (Solo flute) (Strings)]

with a gait something like the first.[A] Less and less we can resist the genuine negro quality of these melodies, and, at the same time, their beauty and the value of the tonal treasure-house in our midst.

[Footnote A:  Again it is interesting to compare here the jubilee song, “Oh!  Redeemed,” in the collection of “Jubilee and Plantation Songs,” of the Oliver Ditson Company.]

The whole of the first Allegro is thus woven of three melodious and characteristic themes in very clear sonata-form.  The second, Largo, movement is a lyric of moving pathos, with a central melody that may not have striking traits of strict African song, and yet belongs to the type closely associated with the negro vein of plaint or love-song.  The rhythmic

[Music:  Largo (English horn solo)]

turns that lead to periods of excitement and climaxes of rapid motion, are absent in the main melody.  But

[Music:  (Oboe and clarinets) (Basses pizz. with tremolo figures in violins)]

they appear in the episode that intervenes.  Even here, in the midst, is a new contrast of a minor lament that has a strong racial trait in the sudden swing to major and, as quickly, back to the drearier mode.  This is followed by a rhapsody or succession of rapid, primitive phrases, that leads to a crisis where, of a sudden, three themes sing at once, the two of the previous Allegro and the main melody of the Largo, in distorted pace with full chorus.  This excitement is as suddenly lulled and soothed by the return of the original moving song.

The Scherzo starts in a quick three-beat strum on the chord we have pointed to as a true model trait of negro music, with the lowered leading-note.  The

[Music:  molto vivace (Fl. and oboes) (Strings) (Cl’t.)]

theme, discussed in close stress of imitation, seems merely to mark the rapid swing in the drone of strange harmony.  But what is really a sort of Trio (poco sostenuto) is another sudden, grateful change to major, perfectly true to life, so to speak, in this turn of mode and in the simple lines of the tune.  The lyric mood all but suppresses the dance, the melody sounding like a new verse of the Largo.  The trip has always lingered, but not too much for the delicious change when it returns to carry us off our feet.