arch
and the other anxious hue.

But quickly they are transformed into the tempest of gaiety in full
parade. When a new burst is preparing, we see the sighing figure all
changed to opposite mood. The grim tune of Scherzo dance enters
mysteriously in big and little and slowly takes on a softened hue,
losing the savage tinge.

After the returning dance, the farewell melody sings from full throat.
Before the ending revel we may feel a glorified guise of the sombre
legend of the symphony.

CHAPTER XII

SIBELIUS. A FINNISH SYMPHONY[A]

[Footnote A: Symphony No. 1, in E minor, by Jan Sibelius, born in 1865.]

We must expect that the music of newer nations will be national. It goes
without saying; for the music comes fresh from the soil; it is not the
result of long refined culture. There is the strain and burst of a
burden of racial feeling to utter itself in the most pliant and eloquent
of all the languages of emotion. It is the first and noblest sentiment
of every nation conscious of its own worth, and it has its counterpart
in the individual. Before the utterance has been found by a people,
before it has felt this sense of its own quality, no other message can
come. So the most glorious period in the history of every country (even
in the eyes of other nations) is the struggle for independence, whether
successful or not.

All on a new plane is this northernmost symphony, with a crooning note
almost of savage, and sudden, fitful bursts from languorous to fiery
mood. The harmony, the turn of tune have a national quality, delicious
and original, though the Oriental tinge appears, as in Slav and Magyar
music, both in bold and in melancholy humor. Though full of strange and
warm colors, the harmonic scheme is simple; rather is the work a tissue
of lyric rhapsody than the close-woven plot of tonal epic. A certain
trace of revery does find a vent in the traditional art of contrary
melodies. But a constant singing in pairs is less art than ancient
folk-manner, like primal music in the love or dance songs of savages.

The symphony begins with a quiet rhapsody of solo clarinet in wistful
minor, clear without chords, though there is a straying into major.
There is no accompaniment save a soft roll of drum, and that soon dies
away.

[Music: _Andante, ma non troppo_
_espress._
(Clarinet)]

The rhapsody seems too vague for melody; yet there are motives, one in
chief, winding to a pause; here is a new appealing phra