In quieter pace comes a tranquil song of lower voices with a companion melody above,—all in serene major. Though it grew naturally out of the rude
dance, the tune has a contrasting charm of idyll and, too, harks back to the former lyric strains that followed the second melody. When the dance returns, there is instead of discussion a mere extension of main motive in full chorus.
But here in the midst the balance is more than restored. From the dance that ceases abruptly we go straight to school or rather cloister. On our recurring nervous phrase a fugue is rung with all pomp and ceremony (meno mosso); and of the dance there are mere faint echoing memories, when the
fugal text seems for a moment to weave itself into the first tune.
Instead, comes into the midst of sermon a hymnal chant, blown gently by the brass, while other stray
voices run lightly on the thread of fugue. There is, indeed, a playful suggestion of the dance somehow in the air. A final tempest of the fugue[43] brings us back to the full verse of dance and the following melodies. But before the end sounds a broad hymnal line in the brass with a dim thread of the fugue, and the figures steal away in solemn stillness.
III.—The Adagio has one principal burden, first borne by violins,—that rises from the germ of earlier