The Scherzo now steals in again, quite a piece, it seems, with the Trio.  As the rising volume nears a crisis, the earliest theme (from the first Allegro) is heard in the basses.  In the hushed discourse of Scherzo theme that follows, the old melody still intrudes.  In mockery of one of its turns comes an enchanting bit of tune, as naive an utterance as any, much like a children’s dancing song.  And it returns later with still new enchantment of rhythm.  But the whole is too full of folk-melody to trace out, yet is, in its very fibre, true to the idea of an epic of the people.

Presently the whole Scherzo and Trio are rehearsed; but now instead of the phase of latest melodies is a close where the oldest theme (of Allegro) is sung in lusty blasts of the horns and wood, with answers of the Scherzo motive.

In the last movement, Allegro con fuoco, appears early a new kind of march tune that, without special

[Music:  Allegro con fuoco (Horns and trumpets with full orchestra)]

trick of rhythm, has the harsh note of lowered leading-note (in the minor, to be sure) in very true keeping with negro song.  The march is carried on, with flowing answer, to a high pitch of varied splendor and tonal power.  The second theme is utterly opposed in a certain pathetic rhapsody.  Yet it rises, at the close, to a fervent burst in rapid motion.  We

[Music:  (Solo clarinets) (tremolo strings)]

may expect in the Finale an orgy of folk-tune and dance, and we are not disappointed.  There is, too, a quick rise and fall of mood, that is a mark of the negro as well as of the Hungarian.  By a sudden doubling, we are in the midst of a true “hoe-down,” in jolliest jingle, with that naive iteration, true to life; it comes out clearest when the tune of the bass (that sounds like a rapid “Three Blind Mice”) is

[Music:  (Strings, wood and brass) (See page 205, line 9.)]

put in the treble.  A pure idealized negro dance-frolic is here.  It is hard to follow all the pranks; lightly as the latest phrase descends in extending melody, a rude blast of the march intrudes in discordant humor.  A new jingle of dance comes with a redoubled pace of bits of the march.  As this dies down to dimmest bass, the old song from the Largo rings high in the wood.  Strangest of all, in a fierce shout of the whole chorus sounds twice this same pathetic strain.  Later comes a redoubled speed of the march in the woodwind, above a slower in low strings.  Now the original theme of all has a noisy say.  Presently the sad second melody has a full verse.  Once more the Largo lullaby sings its strain in the minor.  In the close the original Allegro theme has a literal, vigorous dispute with the march-phrase for the last word of all.

The work does less to exploit American music than to show a certain community in all true folk-song.  Nor is this to deny a strain peculiar to the new world.  It seems a poet of distant land at the same time and in the same tones uttered his longing for his own country and expressed the pathos and the romance of the new.  Dvorak, like all true workers, did more than he thought:  he taught Americans not so much the power of a song of their own, as their right of heritage in all folk-music.  And this is based not merely on an actual physical inheritance from the various older races.