of the first air, the second flows in faster pace (Allegro commodo) as the real text, ever with new blossoming variants that sing together in a madrigal of tuneful voices, where the descending note still has a part in a smooth, gliding pace of violins.
In gayer mood comes a verse of the inverted (Allegro) tune, with other melodic guises hovering about. When the theme descends to the bass, the original Andante phrase sings in the trumpet, and there is a chain of entering voices, in growing agitation, in the main legend with the quicker sprites dancing about. At the height, after the stirring song of trumpets, we feel a passionate strife of resolve and regret; and immediately after, the descending tone is echoed everywhere.
A balancing (second) theme now appears, in tranquil
flow, but pressing on, at the end, in steady ascent as to Parnassian summit. Later comes a new rejoinder in livelier mood, till it is lost in a big, moving verse of the Andante song. But pert retorts from the latest new tune again fill the air, then yield in attendance upon the returning Allegro theme. Of subtle art is the woof of derived phrases. A companion melody, that seems fraught of the text of the second subject, sings with rising passion, while the lower brass blow lustily in eccentric rhythm of the Allegro phrase and at the height share in the dual triumph.
We feel a kinship of mood rather than of theme, a coherence that we fear to relate to definite figures, though the descending symbol is clear against the ascending. An idyllic dialogue, with the continuing guise of the Allegro phrase turns to a gayer revel in the original pace, with a brilliant blare of trumpets.
The free use of themes is shown in the opposite moods of the triplet phrase, of sadness, as in Andante, or buoyant, in Allegro. Here are both in close transition as the various verses return from the beginning, entwined about the first strain of the Andante, gliding through the descending tone into the second soothing song with the Parnassian ascent.
A full verse of the first Andante melody sings at the heart of the plot, followed by the strange daemonic play that keeps the mood within bounds. Indeed, it returns once more as at first, then springs into liveliest trip and rises to an Olympian height, with a final revel of the triplet figure.
II.—With a foreshadowing drop of tone begins the prelude, not unlike the first notes of the symphony,
