rgeous edifice upon C major is kept plain. At
the end, indeed, the tonic chord of C major is clearly sounded by the
wood-wind, against curious triplets, made up of F sharp, A flat and B
flat in various combinations, in the strings; and from it a sudden
modulation is made to C minor, and then to A flat major. This opens the
way for the entrance of the motive of lamentation, or, as the German
commentators call it, the _Schreierei Motiv_:

[Illustration: Musical Score]

This simple and lovely theme is first sounded, not by any of the usual
instruments of the grand orchestra, but by a phonograph in B flat, with
the accompaniment of a solitary trombone. When the composition was
first played at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig the innovation caused a
sensation, and there were loud cries of sacrilege and even proposals of
police action. One indignant classicist, in token of his ire, hung a
wreath of _Knackwuerste_ around the neck of the bust of Johann Sebastian
Bach in the Thomaskirche, and appended to it a card bearing the legend,
_Schweinehund_! But the exquisite beauty of the effect soon won
acceptance for the means employed to attain it, and the phonograph has
so far made its way with German composers that Prof. Ludwig
Grossetrommel, of Goettingen, has even proposed its employment in opera
in place of singers.

This motive of lamentation is worked out on a grand scale, and in
intimate association with the motives of brooding and of warning. Kraus
is not content with the ordinary materials of composition. His creative
force is always impelling him to break through the fetters of the
diatonic scale, and to find utterance for his ideas in archaic and
extremely exotic tonalities. The pentatonic scale is a favorite with
him; he employs it as boldly as Wagner did in _Das Rheingold_. But it is
not enough, for he proceeds from it into the Dorian mode of the ancient
Greeks, and then into the Phrygian, and then into two of the plagal
modes. Moreover, he constantly combines both unrelated scales and
antagonistic motives, and invests the combinations in astounding
orchestral colors, so that the hearer, unaccustomed to such bold
experimentations, is quite lost in the maze. Here, for example, is a
characteristic passage for solo French horn and bass piccolo:

[Illustration: Musical Score]

The dotted half notes for the horn obviously come from the motive
of brooding, in augmentation, but the bass piccolo part is new. It
soon appears, how