hich
lasts forty-five minutes, and has given the author, the executants, and
the public a good deal of tiring work. These symphonic poems are most
difficult to play on account of the complexity, the independence, and
the fantastic caprices of the different parts. Judge for yourself what
the author expects to get out of the music by these few extracts from
the programme:--

[Footnote 176: Nietzsche, _Zarathustra_.]

The introduction represents Don Quixote buried in books of chivalrous
romance; and we have to see in the music, as we do in little Flemish and
Dutch pictures, not only Don Quixote's features, but the words of the
books he reads. Sometimes it is the story of a knight who is righting a
giant, sometimes the adventures of a knight-errant who has dedicated
himself to the services of a lady, sometimes it is a nobleman who has
given his life in fulfilment of a vow to atone for his sins. Don
Quixote's mind becomes confused (and our own with it) over all these
stories; he is quite distracted. He leaves home in company with his
squire. The two figures are drawn with great spirit; the one is an old
Spaniard, stiff, languishing, distrustful, a bit of a poet, rather
undecided in his opinions but obstinate when his mind is once made up;
the other is a fat, jovial peasant, a cunning fellow, given to repeating
himself in a waggish way and quoting droll proverbs--translated in the
music by short-winded phrases that always return to the point they
started from. The adventures begin. Here are the windmills (trills from
the violins and wood wind), and the bleating army of the grand emperor,
Alifanfaron (tremolos from the wood wind); and here, in the third
variation, is a dialogue between the knight and his squire, from which
we are to guess that Sancho questions his master on the advantages of a
chivalrous life, for they seem to him doubtful. Don Quixote talks to him
of glory and honour; but Sancho has no thought for it. In reply to these
grand words he urges the superiority of sure profits, fat meals, and
sounding money. Then the adventures begin again. The two companions fly
through the air on wooden horses; and the illusion of this giddy voyage
is given by chromatic passages on the flutes, harps, kettledrums, and a
"windmachine," while "the tremolo of the double basses on the key-note
shows that the horses have never left the earth."[177]

But I must stop. I have said enough to show the fun the author is
indulging in. When