PURCELL'S song comes from a play by Shadwell. The Libertine, one of many for which he wrote incidental music. The words are a jolly invitation to lads and lasses to come away to sport and play, ' for this is' Flora's holiday.' .
MY Heart Ever Faithful is an Air from one of Bach's Cantatas-God so Loved the World. It is a song of gladness :—' My heart ever faithful, sing praises, te joyful, thy Saviour is near ! '
THE first of the two Schubert songs is one of the cycle entitled The Fair Maid of the Mill, settings of poems by Wilhelm Muiler. A miller's apprentice goes off to see the world. Whither ? is the question he puts to a brooklet beside which he takes his way. ' You will find your mill to turn, some day,' is his reflection, and I'll find my work waiting for me too—somewhere, some day.'
Concerning Hark: Hark, the story goes that one day Schubert met a friend in the garden of a country inn, who was reading Shakespeare. Schubert took up the book. which opened at ' Cymbeline.' at the poem ' Hark. hark. the lark at Heaven's gate sings.' which Cloten's musicians perform to Imogen, to wake her sweetly in the morning. ' Oh ! ' said Schubert. ' I have thought of such a lovely tune for that ! What a pity I haven't some music paper here ! ' The friend took up the bill of fare and drew some staves on it. and Schubert at once wrote the music that so beautifully fits the poem.
THE THIRD MOVEMENT is a Scherzo. Throughout most of this Movement Strings and Woodwind maintain a delicate swift flight of notes. But there is an unmistakably military, even heroic, feeling in the March-tune which very soon appears and swells over the whole Orchestra.
In the FOURTH MOVEMENT (Slow and lamenting, then somewhat quicker) the moods pass through pathos and pity to final despair-a sadly appropriate ending to the Composer's last Symphony. Death overtook him within three months of the completion of the work.
THIS piece is one of the Movements in Bach's
Partita Suite in D Minor. The Chaconne was an old dance-form, but this example is far removed from anything dance-like, being an elaborate movement in the form of a Theme and Variations.
The Theme is a broad melody in a minor key, eight bars long and in three-beat time, most of it harmonized by chords across four strings of tl'e Violin. The succeeding Variations, which expand the harmonies rather than the melody of the Theme, run into each other without a break. There are twenty-nine of them, Nos. 15 to 23 being in the major key.
