In blended conclusion of the contending moods comes a final verse of the legend in major, with full accoutrement of sounds and lesser rhythm, in majestic pace. And there is a following frolic with a verse of the serene song. The end is in the first Allegro theme of the symphony, in transfigured major tone.
We must be clear at least of the poet's intent. In the Fifth Symphony Tschaikowsky sang a brave song of struggle with Fate.
CHAPTER XI
THE NEO-RUSSIANS
For some mystic reason nowhere in modern music is the symphony so justified as in Russia. Elsewhere it survives by the vitality of its tradition. In France we have seen a series of works distinguished rather by consummate refinement than by strength of intrinsic content. In Germany since the masterpieces of Brahms we glean little besides the learnedly facile scores of a Bruckner, with a maximum of workmanship and a minimum of sturdy feeling,—or a group of "heroic" symphonies all cast in the same plot of final transfiguration. The one hopeful sign is the revival of a true counterpoint in the works of Mahler.
Some national song, like the Bohemian, lends itself awkwardly to the larger forms. The native vein is inadequate to the outer mould, that shrinks and dwindles into formal utterance. It may be a question of the quantity of a racial message and of its intensity after long suppression. Here, if we cared to enlarge in a political disquisition, we might account for the symphony of Russians and Finns, and of its absence in Scandinavia. The material elements, abundant rhythm, rich color, individual and varied folk-song, are only the means by which the national temper is expressed. Secondly, it must be noted as a kind of paradox, the power of the symphony as a national utterance is increased by a mastery of the earlier classics. With all that we hear of the narrow nationalism of the Neo-Russians, we cannot deny them the breadth that comes from a close touch with the masters. Mozart is an element in their music almost as strong as their own folk-song. Here, it may be, the bigger burden of a greater national message unconsciously seeks the larger means of expression. And it becomes clear that the sharper and narrower the national school, the less complete is its utterance, the more it defeats its ultimate purpose.
The broad equipment of the new Russian group is seen at the outset in the works of its founder, Balakirew. And thus the difference between them and Tschaikowsky lay mainly in the formulated aim.[34]
The national idea, so eminent in modern music, is not everywhere equally justified. And here, as in an object-lesson, we see the true merits of the problem. While one nation spontaneously utters its cry, another, like a cock on the barnyard, starts a movement in mere idle vanity, in sheer self-glorification.
In itself there is nothing divine in a national idea that needs to be enshrined in art. Deliberate segregation is equally vain, whether it be national or social. A true racial celebration must above all be spontaneous. Even then it can have no sanction in art, unless it utter a primal motive of resistance to suppression, the elemental pulse of life itself. There is somehow a divine dignity about the lowest in human rank, whether racial or individual. The oppressed of a nation stands a universal type, his wrongs are the wrongs of all, and so his lament has a world-wide appeal. And in truth from the lowest class rises ever the rich spring of folk-song of which all the art is reared, whence comes the paradox that the peasant furnishes the song for the delight of his oppressors, while they boast of it as their own. Just in so far as man is devoid of human sympathy, is he narrow and barren in his song. Music is mere feeling, the fulness of human experience, not in the hedonic sense of modern tendencies, but of pure joys and profound sorrows that spring from elemental relations, of man to man, of mate to mate.