' music sounds the depths. He uses the
contra-bassoon in about all of his orchestral compositions (you will
hear it to-day), and most of his piano works take the last A on the
piano. If his bass seems at times muddy it is because he goes so deep
that he stirs up the bottom."
"How clear!" exclaimed Miss Gay Votte.
"Take measure sixty-five in Berlioz's 'Dance of the Sylphs,'" said Dr.
Dubbe. "The spirits hover over Faust, who has fallen asleep. The 'cellos
are sawing away drowsily on their pedal point D (probably in sympathy
with Faust), and what sounds like Herr Thomas tuning the orchestra is
the lone A of the fifth. The absent third represents the sleep of Faust.
This is a trick common to the new school. Wagner uses it in 'Siegfried,'
in the close of the Tarnhelm motive, to illustrate the vanishing
properties of the cap. In measure fifty-seven of the Ballet you will
find a chord of the augmented five-six, a harmony built on the first
inversion of the diminished seventh of the key of the dominant, with
lowered bass tone, and which in this instance resolves into the dominant
triad. Others claim that this harmony is a dominant ninth with root
omitted and lowered fifth."
"It has always seemed so to me," said Mrs. Fuller-Prunes. But I don't
believe she knows a thing about it.
"I think it's all awfully cute," said Miss Georgiana Gush.
"The harmony," resumed Dr. Dubbe, frowning, "really sounds like a
dominant seventh, and may be changed enharmonically into a dominant
seventh and resolve into the Neapolitan sixth. This is all clear to you,
I suppose?"
"Oh, yes," we all replied.
Dr. Dubbe then analyzed and played for us Brahms' First Symphony, after
which Miss Ellenborough served doughnuts made in the shape of a Gothic
B. We all had to eat them--one for Bach, one for Beethoven, and one for
Brahms.
V.
Dr. Dubbe did not appear enthusiastic over this week's program. I guess
because there was no Bach or Brahms on it. But we enjoyed his lecture
just the same.
"Raff was the Raphael of music," said Dr. Dubbe. "He was handicapped by
a superabundance of ideas, but, unlike Raphael, he did not constantly
repeat himself. This week we will have a look at his Fifth Symphony,
entitled 'Lenore.'"
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Georgiana Gush, "that's the one the hero of 'The
First Violin' was always whistling."
"As you all know," said Dr. Dubbe, "this symphony is based on Buerger's
well-known ballad of 'Lenore,' but as only
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