The Scherzo starts in a quick three-beat strum on the chord we have pointed to as a true model trait of negro music, with the lowered leading-note. The
theme, discussed in close stress of imitation, seems merely to mark the rapid swing in the drone of strange harmony. But what is really a sort of Trio (poco sostenuto) is another sudden, grateful change to major, perfectly true to life, so to speak, in this turn of mode and in the simple lines of the tune. The lyric mood all but suppresses the dance, the melody sounding like a new verse of the Largo. The trip has always lingered, but not too much for the delicious change when it returns to carry us off our feet.
The Scherzo now steals in again, quite a piece, it seems, with the Trio. As the rising volume nears a crisis, the earliest theme (from the first Allegro) is heard in the basses. In the hushed discourse of Scherzo theme that follows, the old melody still intrudes. In mockery of one of its turns comes an enchanting bit of tune, as naïve an utterance as any, much like a children's dancing song. And it returns later with still new enchantment of rhythm. But the whole is too full of folk-melody to trace out, yet is, in its very fibre, true to the idea of an epic of the people.
Presently the whole Scherzo and Trio are rehearsed; but now instead of the phase of latest melodies is a close where the oldest theme (of Allegro) is sung in lusty blasts of the horns and wood, with answers of the Scherzo motive.
In the last movement, Allegro con fuoco, appears early a new kind of march tune that, without special
trick of rhythm, has the harsh note of lowered leading-note (in the minor, to be sure) in very true keeping with negro song. The march is carried on, with flowing answer, to a high pitch of varied splendor and tonal power. The second theme is utterly opposed in a certain pathetic rhapsody. Yet it rises, at the close, to a fervent burst in rapid motion. We
may expect in the Finale an orgy of folk-tune and dance, and we are not disappointed. There is, too, a quick rise and fall of mood, that is a mark of the negro as well as of the Hungarian. By a sudden doubling, we are in the midst of a true "hoe-down," in jolliest jingle, with that naïve iteration, true to life; it comes out clearest when the tune of the bass (that sounds like a rapid "Three Blind Mice") is