After a climax of the first motive a frolicking theme begins (in English horn and violas). If we were forced to guess, we could see here the dandy devil, with pointed mustachios, frisking about. It is probably another guise of the second motive which presently appears in the bass. A little later, dolce amabile in a madrigal of wood and strings, we may see the gentlemanly devil, the gallant. With a crash of chord and a roll of cymbals re-enters the first motive, to flickering harmonies of violins, harp and flutes, taken up by succeeding voices, all in the whole-tone scale. Hurrying to a clamorous height, the pace glides into a Movimento di Valzer, in massed volume, with the frolicking figure in festive array.
To softest tapping of lowest strings and drums, a shadow of the second figure passes here and there, with a flash of harp. Soon, in returning merriment, it is coursing in unison strings (against an opposite motion in the wood).
At the height of revel, as the strings are holding a trembling chord, a sprightly Gallic tune of the street pipes in the reed, with intermittent flash of the harp, and, to be sure, an unfamiliar tang of harmonies and strange perversions of the tune.[86] In the midst is the original flickering figure. As the whole chorus is singing the tune at the loudest, the brass breaks into another traditional air of the Revolutionary Song of 1789.[87] While the trip is still ringing in the strings, a lusty chorus breaks into the song[88] "La Carmagnole," against a blast of the horns in a guise of the first motive.
Grim guises of the main figures (in inverted profile) are skulking about to uncanny harmonies. A revel of new pranks dies down to chords of muted horns, amid flashing runs of the harp, with a long roll of drums. Here Grave in solemn pace, violas and bassoon strike an ecclesiastical incantation, answered by the organ. Presently a Gregorian plain chant begins solemnly in the strings aided by the organ while a guise of the second profane motive intrudes. Suddenly in quick pace against a fugal tread of lower voices, a light skipping figure dances in the high wood. And now loud trumpets are saucily blowing the chant to the quick step, echoed by the wood. And we catch the wicked song of the street (in the English horn) against a legend of hell in lower voices.[89]
In still livelier pace the reeds sound the street song against a trip of strings, luring the other voices into a furious chorus. All at once, the harp and violins strike the midnight hour to a chord of horns, while a single impish figure dances here or there. To trembling strings and flashing harp the high reed pipes again the song of the Boulevard, echoed by low bassoons.
In rapidest swing the original main motives now sing a joint verse in a kind of reprise, with the wild shriek at the end of the line, to a final crashing height. The end comes with dashes of the harp, betwixt pausing chords in the high wood, with a final stifled note.
FOOTNOTES
[[1]] The "Dante" Symphony of Liszt was written between 1847 and 1855; the "Faust" Symphony between 1854 and 1857. Wagner finished the text of Tristan und Isolde in 1857; the music was not completed until 1859. In 1863 was published the libretto of the Nibelungen-Ring. In 1864 Wagner was invited by King Ludwig of Bavaria to complete the work in Munich.
[[2]] In literature this movement is most marked, as may be seen by contrasting the tone of Goethe with that of Sudermann; by noting the decadence from the stories of a Chamisseau and Immermann to those of a Gottfried Keller; from the novels of Freytag to the latest of Frenssen and Arthur Schnitzler; from the poems of Heine to those of Hoffmansthal, author of the text of Strauss' later operas.
Or, contrast merely the two typical dramas of love, Goethe's "Faust" and Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde."