a hymn may be a perfect dance.

Before the close we hear the first fanfare of trumpet from the opening
symphony, that has the ring of a motto of the whole. At the very end is
a transfigured entrance,--very slowly and softly, to a celestial touch
of harp, of the first descending figure of the movement.

_II.--3. Scherzo._ Jovial in high degree, the Scherzo begins with the
thematic complexity of modern fashion. In dance tune of three beats
horns lead off with a jolly call; strings strike dancing chords; the
lower wind play a rollicking answer, but together with the horns, both
strains continuing in dancing duet. Still the saucy call of horns seems
the main text, though no single tune reigns alone.

[Music: (Horns)
_Scherzo. With vigor, not too fast_
(Strings and flutes)
(Strings)
(Clarinets and basses)]

The violins now play above the horns; then the cellos join and there is
a three-part song of independent tunes, all in the dance. So far in
separate voices it is now taken up by full chorus, though still the
basses sing one way, trebles another, and the middle horns a third. And
now the high trumpet strikes a phrase of its own. But they are all in
dancing swing, of the fibre of the first jolly motive.

A new episode is started by a quicker _obligato_ of violins, in
neighboring minor, that plays about a fugue of the woodwind on an
incisive theme where the cadence has a strange taste of bitter sweet
harmony in the modern Gallic manner.

[Music: (Clarinets)
(Violas)
(Violins)
(Bass of brass and wood)]

Horns and violins now pursue their former duet, but in the changed hue
of minor where the old concords are quaintly perverted. But this is only
to give a merrier ring to the bright madrigal that follows in sweetly
clashing higher wood, with the trip still in the violins. Thence the
horns and violins break again into the duet in the original key. Here
the theme is wittily inverted in the bass, while other strings sing
another version above.

So the jolly dance and the quaint fugue alternate; a recurring phrase is
carried to a kind of dispute, with opposite directions above and below
and much augmented motion in the strings.

In the dance so far, in "three time," is ever the vigorous stamp on the
third beat, typical of the German peasant "_Laendler_." Here of a sudden
is a change as great as possible within the continuing dance of three
steps. "More tranquil" in pace, in soft strings, without a trace of the
_Lae