iverance from a stupid slavery of rules,--if we would
only get the spirit of them without the inadequate letter. Better, of
course, the rules than a fatal chaos. But there is here in the bold
flight of these harmonies, soaring as though on some hidden straight
path, a truly Promethean utterance.

It is significant, in the problem of future music, that of the
symphonies based upon recent French ideas, the most subtly conceived and
designed should have been written in America.

_I._--In pale tint of harmony sways the impersonal phrase that begins
with a descending tone. We may

[Music: _Andante_ (Melody in flute and violas)
(Violins)
(Cellos with basses in lower 8ve.)]

remember[A] how first with the symphony came a clear sense of tonal
residence. It was like the age in painting when figures no longer hung
in the gray air, when they were given a resting-place, with trees and a
temple.

[Footnote A: See Vol. I, Chapter I.]

Here we find just the opposite flight from clear tonality, as if
painting took to a Japanese manner, sans aught of locality. Where an
easy half-step leads gently somewhere, a whole tone sings instead.
Nothing obvious may stand.

It marks, in its reaction, the excessive stress of tonality and of
simple colors of harmony. The basic sense of residence is not abandoned;
there is merely a bolder search for new tints, a farther straying from
the landmarks.

Soon our timid tune is joined by a more expressive line that rises in
ardent reaches to a sudden tumult, with a fiery strain of trumpets where
we catch a glimpse of the triplet figure. After a dulcet lullaby

[Music: (Flute with _tremolo_ of high strings)
(New melody in ob. and violas)
(Cellos with sustained lower B of basses)]

of the first air, the second flows in faster pace (_Allegro commodo_) as
the real text, ever with new blossoming variants that sing together in a
madrigal of tuneful voices, where the descending note still has a part
in a smooth, gliding pace of violins.

In gayer mood comes a verse of the inverted (Allegro) tune, with other
melodic guises hovering about. When the theme descends to the bass, the
original Andante phrase sings in the trumpet, and there is a chain of
entering voices, in growing agitation, in the main legend with the
quicker sprites dancing about. At the height, after the stirring song
of trumpets, we feel a passionate strife of resolve and regret; and
immediately after, the descending tone is echoed ev