Musical Criticisms

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evalently in syncopated double time, and the other approaching the character of a tarantelle. The pianoforte part is sometimes of independent interest, and sometimes consists of beautiful accompanying passages constructed from chords in extended position. The second movement bears the name "Dumka," which, we believe, was first used as the name of a musical movement by Dvoràk, or at any rate first became familiar to the world in general through his works. It is derived from a Slavonic root meaning "to think," and may be taken as something like the equivalent of "meditation." There are several peculiarly interesting and charming movements in the works of the Bohemian composer

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n it was pretty generally thought that Negro tunes formed an exception to the principle that all sincere, unsophisticated, and original musical utterance has artistic value. Dvoràk has taught us the danger of regarding any natural thing as common or unclean. He has shown that Negro melody may give rise to beautiful works of art no less than Irish, Hungarian, or Scandinavian melody. Dvoràk is the most impossible to classify of all composers. He is na?f and yet a master of complex and ingenious design; a scorner of scholastic device and at the same time a successful worker in the classical forms; the most original of the composers who became known during the latter half of the 19th century, yet suspected, on occasio

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ks, though they fall far short of the exaltation, intensity, and rugged grandeur of many third-manner compositions, are more perfectly balanced. They are also entirely free from certain perverse-one may almost say misanthropic-elements which are a stumbling-block in much of Beethoven's music. Such is the felicity of the invention that each new thematic element strikes the ear like a sort of revelation. Nowhere is there an overlong development or anything that bewilders or alienates. The Andante quasi Allegretto of the Quartet reveals the composer in an extremely rare mood. The delicate romance of it recalls the slow movement of the Schumann Quintet, however much more profound Beethoven may be. The ha

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but none other is so richly and perfectly organised in structure or so sweetly benign in expression. The two solo instruments are treated by the composer on a footing of absolute equality, and the manner in which his intentions were yesterday realised by the two masterly performers was above praise. Why (one is likely to ask on hearing such a performance) did a composer, who could make a couple of instruments sing so sweetly and graciously and in a manner so perfectly adapted to their proper genius, very frequently force the singing voice to foll

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execution in the rapid parts. The Quartet, which occupies quite forty-five minutes in performance, is remarkable for an opening movement in which adagio and allegro sections alternate with wayward frequency, for the curious fourth movement in

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gnificance, there is in this movement a strange mystical exaltation that is not often met with in Tcha?kovsky. It sounds like a dream of the shepherds who watched their flocks by night and heard the angels sing, or an illustration of some kindred theme in which a homely and pastoral note is associated with devout and joyous feeling. It

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rning consciousness of the friend's death. Occasionally the two moods are mingled, as in that part of the waltz where the dainty dalliance of the pianoforte part is accompanied by the tragic variant of the central theme in the strings. The opening movement, "pezzo elegiaco," is dominated by that tragic variant which, at the very outset, is given out with mighty eloquence by the richest tones of the 'cello-a wailing complaint that recurs in many different forms and informs all three movements in one way or another. Analysing the composition, therefore, not with reference to musical technicalities, but psychologically, we find it to consist of three main elements:-(1) The composer's affection for his friend and grief at his loss; (2) biographical reminiscences and reflections thereon; (3) the funeral panegyric. To some extent these elements are intermingled throughout the work; but they dominate the respective movements as here numbered, so that, broadly speaking, one may call the first movement "lament," the second "recollections," the third "eulogy." In all important respects the Trio strikes us as thoroughly original, though in a few superficial matters the composer seems to take hin

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up. The music proves that the composer understood his medium with extraordinary thoroughness. Some of his audacious progressions, his persistent reduplications, and his rushing unison passages one might, at first blush, call orchestral, yet more careful observation quickly convinces one that they are not orchestral, but that the special kind of eloquence in the music belongs essentially to the particular combination for which it was written. The key system is disconcerting at first. The composer seems to insist that two chords so unlike tonic and dominant as F major and D flat minor (if anyone thinks there is no such key he cannot have studied César Franck) will do just as well for the main props of an extended composition; and he has all the best of the argument. The technical interest of the work is of the keenest from beginning to end; but the poetic interest seems to develop slowly, the imaginative play being nowhere as definite as in the finale, which begins with strong passages of extreme nervous agitation and culminates in a tumultuous déno?ment