ay of strings and wood, with constant recurrence of mobile
figures above and below. It seems as if the image of the fountain is
fittest and most tempting for mirroring in music. Perhaps the most
beautiful, the most haunting, of all the "Manfred" music of Schumann is
this same scene of the Witch of the Alps.

Here, with Tschaikowsky, hardly a single note of brass intrudes on this
_perpetuum mobile_ of light, plashing spray until, later, strains that
hark back to the first scene cloud the clear brilliancy of the cascade.
Now the play of the waters is lost in the new vision, and a limpid song
glides in the violins, with big rhythmic chords of harps, is taken up in
clarinets, and carried on by violins in new melodic verse, _con
tenerezza e molto espressione_. Then the whole chorus sing the tune in
gentle volume. As it dies away, the music of the falling waters plash as
before. The returning song has phases of varying sadness and passion. At
the most vehement height,--and here, if we choose, we may see the stern
order to retire,--the fatal chant is shrieked by full chorus in almost
unison fierceness.

Gradually the innocent play of the waters is heard again, though a
gloomy pall hangs over. The chant sounds once more before the end.

The third, "Pastoral," scene we are most free to enjoy in its pure
musical beauty, with least need of definite dramatic correspondences. It
seems at first as if no notes of gloom are allowed to intrude, as if the
picture of happy simplicity stands as a foil to the tragedy of the
solitary dreamer; for an early climax gives a mere sense of the awe of
Alpine nature.

Still, as we look and listen closer, we cannot escape so easily, in
spite of the descriptive title. Indeed, the whole work seems, in its
relation to the poem upon which it is based, a very elusive play in a
double kind of symbolism. At first it is all a clear subjective
utterance of the hero's woes and hopes and fears, without definite
touches of external things. Yet, right in the second scene the torrent
is clear almost to the eye, and the events pass before us with sharp
distinctness. Tending, then, to look on the third as purest pastoral,
we are struck in the midst by an ominous strain from one of the earliest
moments of the work, the answer of the first theme of all. Here notes of
horns ring a monotone; presently a church-bell adds a higher note. The
peaceful pastoral airs then return, like the sun after a fleeting storm.

The