(Continued)
Relayed to Daventry Experimental DURING the summers of 1884-5, when Brahms was writing this, the last of his four symphonies, he was reading the tragedies of Sophocles. Perhaps, therefore, these may have influenced his mind a little. There is something austere in the music that has kinship with the moods of Greek tragedy, and also there is (as always in Brahms) deeply-felt, if restrained emotion. The work is in the usual four Movements.
FIRST MOVEMENT. The wide-stepping First
Main Tune, heard at the commencement, is a good deal elaborated, and the music soon becomes more animated.
A subsidiary theme for Woodwind and Horns has that arpeggio progress (the melody leaping from note to note of a chord) that was one of Brahms's distinguishing marks in tune-making. From this and the First Main Tune a great deal of the Movement is built up, though a group" of Second Tunes (instead of one Main Tune only) is also utilized. SECOND MOVEMENT. This is a tender, lyrical Movementin reflective, almost elegiac mood. THIRD MOVEMENT. Here is an atmosphere of rather boisterous jollity, which the percussion instruments notably help to create. The Movement is a Rondo, the Main Theme coming round several times, with other matter between the repetitions. FOURTH MOVEMENT. This takes a form rare in symphonies-that of the Passacaglia, which was originally a dance with, a fixed, recurring melody.