Part 16 (1/2)

abandon as of primitive dance. Strings stir the feet; the horns blow the first motive of the savage tune; the upper wood fall in with a das.h.i.+ng jingle,--like a stroke of cymbals across the hostile harmonies.

Whether a recurring idiom is merely personal or belongs to the special work is difficult to tell. In reality it matters little. Here the strange rising tone is the same as in the former (second) melody. In the rude vigor of harmonies the primitive idea is splendidly stressed.

Right in the answer is a guise of short, nervous phrase, that gets a new touch of bizarre by a leap of the seventh from below. In this figure that moves throughout the symphony we see an outward symbol of an inner connection.--Bells soon lend a festive ring to the main tune.

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

[Music: _Molto cantabile_]

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

[Music: _Meno mosso_ (Oboe) _molto marcato_ (Violins) staccato]

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 bra.s.s, while other stray

[Music: _Leggiero_]

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[A] brings us back to the full verse of dance and the following melodies. But before the end sounds a broad hymnal line in the bra.s.s with a dim thread of the fugue, and the figures steal away in solemn stillness.

[Footnote A: It is of the first two notes of the symphony that the fugal theme is made. For though it is longer in the strings, the brief motion is ever accented in the wood. Thus relentless is the themal coherence.

If we care to look closer we see how the (following) chant is a slower form of the fugal theme, while the ba.s.s is in the line of the dance-tune. In the chant in turn we cannot escape a reminder, if not a likeness, of the second theme of the first movement.]

_III._--The Adagio has one princ.i.p.al burden, first borne by violins,--that rises from the germ of earlier

[Music: _Adagio_ (Strings with added harmony in ba.s.soons and horns)]

lyric strains. Then the clarinet joins in a quiet madrigal of tender phrases. We are tempted to find here an influence from a western fas.h.i.+on, a taint of polythemal virtuosity, in this mystic maze of many strains harking from all corners of the work, without a gain over an earlier Russian simplicity. Even the Slavic symphony seems to have fallen into a state of artificial cunning, where all manners of greater

[Music: (Solo clarinet) _espress._ (Divided strings) _dolce_]

or lesser motives are packed close in a tangled ma.s.s.

It cannot be said that a true significance is achieved in proportion to the number of concerting themes. We might dilate on the sheer inability of the hearer to grasp a clear outline in such a multiple plot.

There is somehow a false kind of polyphony, a too great facility of spurious counterpoint, that differs subtly though sharply from the true art where the number entails no loss of individual quality; where the separate melodies move by a divine fitness that measures the perfect conception of the multiple idea; where there is no thought of a later padding to give a s.h.i.+mmer of profound art. It is here that the symphony is in danger from an exotic style that had its origin in German music-drama.

From this point the Rachmaninow symphony languishes in the fountain of its fresh inspiration, seems consciously constructed with calculating care.

There is, after all, no virtue in itself in mere themal interrelation,--in particular of lesser phrases. One cogent theme may well prevail as text of the whole. As the recurring motives are multiplied, they must lose individual moment. The listener's grasp becomes more difficult, until there is at best a mystic maze, a sweet chaos, without a clear melodic thought. It cannot be maintained that the perception of the modern audience has kept pace with the complexity of scores. Yet there is no gainsaying an alluring beauty of these waves of sound rising to fervent height in the main melody that is expressive of a modern wistfulness.

But at the close is a fierce outbreak of the first motto, with a defiance of regret, in faster, reckless pace, brief, but suddenly recurring. Exquisite is this

[Music: (Ob.) _cantabile_ (Strings, wood and horns)]

cooing of voices in mournful bits of the motto, with a timid upper phrase in the descending tone.