ragged rhythm that we Americans cannot disclaim as a nation. The working up is spirited, and presently out of the answer grows a charming jingle that somehow strikes home.
It begins in the minor and has a strange, barbaric touch of cadence. Many would acknowledge it at most as a touch of Indian mode. Yet it is another phase of the lowered seventh. And if we care to search, we find quite a prototype in a song like "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel." Soon the phrase has a more familiar ring as it turns into a friendly major. But the real second theme comes in a solo tune on the flute, in the major,
with a gait something like the first.[48] Less and less we can resist the genuine negro quality of these melodies, and, at the same time, their beauty and the value of the tonal treasure-house in our midst.
The whole of the first Allegro is thus woven of three melodious and characteristic themes in very clear sonata-form. The second, Largo, movement is a lyric of moving pathos, with a central melody that may not have striking traits of strict African song, and yet belongs to the type closely associated with the negro vein of plaint or love-song. The rhythmic
turns that lead to periods of excitement and climaxes of rapid motion, are absent in the main melody. But
they appear in the episode that intervenes. Even here, in the midst, is a new contrast of a minor lament that has a strong racial trait in the sudden swing to major and, as quickly, back to the drearier mode. This is followed by a rhapsody or succession of rapid, primitive phrases, that leads to a crisis where, of a sudden, three themes sing at once, the two of the previous Allegro and the main melody of the Largo, in distorted pace with full chorus. This excitement is as suddenly lulled and soothed by the return of the original moving song.