Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies

by Philip H. Goepp

harmony that lends a pervading charm to the symphony. Here the high wood has a song in constant thirds, right from the heart of the rhapsody, all bedecked as melody with a new rhythm and answer. Soon this simple lay is woven in a skein of pairs of voices, meeting or diverging. But quickly we are back in the trance of lyric song, over palpitating strings, with the refrain very like the former companion phrase that somehow leads or grows to a

rhythmic verse of the first strain of the rhapsody. Here begins a long mystic phase of straying voices (of the wood) in the crossing figures of the song, in continuous fantasy that somehow has merged into the line of second Allegro theme, winging towards a brilliant height where the strings ring out the strain amid sharp cries of the brass in startling hues of harmony and electric calls from the first rhapsody.

From out the maze and turmoil the shadowy melody rises in appealing beauty like heavenly vision and lo! is but a guise of the first strain of rhapsody. It rises amid flashes of fiery brass in bewildering blare of main theme, then sinks again to the depth of brooding, though the revery of the appealing phrase has a climactic height of its own, with the strange, palpitating harmonies.

In a new meditation on bits of the first Allegro theme sounds suddenly a fitful burst of the second, that presently emerges in triumphant, sovereign song. Again, on a series of flights the main theme is reached and leaps once more to impassioned height.

But this is followed by a still greater climax of moving pathos whence we descend once more to lyric meditation (over trembling strings). Follows a final tempest and climax of the phrase of second theme.

The movement thus ends, not in joyous exultation, but in a fierce triumph of sombre minor.

The Andante is purest folk-melody, and it is strange how we know this, though we do not know the special theme. We cannot decry the race-element as a rich fount of melody. While older nations strive and strain, it pours forth by some mystery in prodigal flow with less tutored peoples who are singing their first big song to the world. Only, the ultimate goal for each racial inspiration must be a greater universal celebration.

The lyric mood is regnant here, in a melody that, springing from distant soil, speaks straight to every heart, above all with the concluding refrain. It is of the purest vein, of the primal fount, deeper than mere racial turn or trait. Moreover, with a whole coronet of gems of modern harmony, it has a broad swing and curve that gives the soothing sense of fireside;