Relayed from the Free Trade Hall
S.B. from Manchester
PURCELL was an inventive genius, whose inquiring mind revelled in thinking out new ideas and making experiments in music.
At a time when music for a few strings only was little pursued, he was trying what could be done with from three to eight string parts-writing Fantasias, as lie called them.
In this Fantasia in five String parts we shall hear how ingeniously he dealt with the pretty little problem of the Note that Wouldn't be Silent.
TCHAIKOVSKY said of this Symphony: I love it as I have never loved one of my musical offspring before.' He did not live to witness its abounding success : a fortnight after its first performance he was dead. The separate Movements of the Symphony are as follows :—
First Movement. (Slow Introduction. Then
Fairly quick—Rather slow-Quick and lively —Rather slow.) That is to say, this is a Movement with many changes of speed. With the Fairly Quick' section the Movement proper opens. It is made out of two chief tunes-one agitated and broken in character, and the other gracious and flowing.
Second Movement. (Quickly, but gracefully.)
This is the favourite Movement, with five beats to a bar, instead of the two, three, four, or six usual at the time this work was written. (Considered in another way, it consists of alternate bars of two and three beats.)
The Third Movement is a Scherzo. Throughout inost of this Movement Strings and Wood-wind 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 sweUs 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.
