The former distant sounds of feast are now near
and clear in actual words.

[Music: _Adagio_
(Muted strings)
(_Pizz._ basses an 8ve. lower)]

There is an intimate charm, a true glamor of love-idyll about the
Adagio. On more eager pulse rises a languorous strain of horn and
cellos. The flow

[Music: (Horn and cellos with murmuring strings)]

of its passionate phrase reaches the climax of prologue where, the type
and essence of the story, it plays about the lovers' first meeting. As
lower strings hum the burden of desire, higher wood add touches of
ecstasy, the melting violins sing the wooing song, and all break into an
overwhelming rapture, as though transfigured in the brightness of its
own vehemence, in midst of a trembling mystery.

The restless spirit starts (_allegro agitato_) in fearsome agitation on
quick nervous throb of melody; below, violas sing a soothing answer;
there is a clear dialogue of wistful lovers.

Instead of the classic form of several verses led by one dominant melody
to varied paths and views, here almost in reverse we seem to fall from a
broader lyric mood to a single note of sad yearning that

[Music: (Fl. with Eng. horn an 8ve. below)
(Muted violins with sustained lower strings)]

grows out of the several strains. Upon such a motive a new melody sings.
The delicate bliss of early love is all about, and in the lingering
close the timid ecstasies of wooing phrase. But this is a mere prelude
to the more highly stressed, vehement song of love that follows on the
same yearning motive. Here is the crowning, summing phase of the whole
poem, without a return to earlier melody save that, by significant
touch, it ends in the same expressive turn as the former languorous
song.

The first melody does not reappear, is thus a kind of background of the
scene. The whole is a dramatic lyric that moves from broader tune to a
reiterated note of sad desire, driven to a splendid height of crowned
bliss. The turbulence of early love is there; pure ardor in flaming
tongues of ecstasy; the quick turn of mood and the note of omen of the
original poem: the violence of early love and the fate that hangs over.

Berlioz has drawn the subject of his Scherzo from Mercutio's speech in
Scene 4 of the First Act of Shakespeare's tragedy. He has entitled it
"Queen Mab, or the Fairy of Dreams," and clearly intends to portray the
airy flight of Mab and her fairies. But we must doubt whether this, the
musical gem of th