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The orchestral accompaniment, beginning quietly, gradually swells into a torrent of music quite unrivalled among Wagner's great finales. The end of Goetterdaemmerung is impressive because of the wonderful gathering together of the musical motives of Siegfried's life, but as a musical composition it cannot compare with the end of Tristan.
The meagerness and triteness of the music and piece astonished me. After the full orchestral accompaniments, the richly harmonized concerted pieces and exquisite melodies lavished on us in our modern operas, these simple airs and their choruses and mean finales produce an effect from their poverty of absolute musical starvation. GREAT RUSSELL STREET, January 31, 1832.
Many a brain stupefied by the lonely life of the dugout, the solemn, often portentous grandeur of the great blue dome, under which the pioneers crawled so helplessly, had been blown zigzag by the wild buffetings of the wayward, wanton winds, punctuating the dread loneliness so insistently, so incessantly, so diabolically by its staccato preludes, by its innuendoes of interludes prestissimo, by its finales frantically furious and fiendishly calculated to frighten the soul and tear the bewildered and weakened brain from its pedestal.
This is particularly the case in those final movements which have grown out of the Rondeau, and of which the Finales to Mozart's Symphony in E flat, and to Beethoven's in A, are excellent examples. Here the purely rhythmical movement, so to speak, celebrates its orgies; and it is consequently impossible to take these movements too quick.
I can't hear a note," was the impatient rejoinder. "Never mind," said the other; "come, and you will see something at all events." So the twain repaired to the theatre to hear Spontini's "Olympie." All went well till one of the overwhelming finales, which happened to be played that evening more fortissimo than usual. The patient turned around beaming with delight, exclaiming, "Doctor, I can hear."
For he seems to have found in profusion the accents that quicken and lift and lance, found them in all varieties, from the brisk and delicate steps of the ballets in "La Damnation de Faust" to the large, far-flung momentum that drives the choruses of the "Requiem" mountain high; from the mad and riotous finales of the "Harold" symphony and the "Symphonie Fantastique" to the red, turbulent and canaille march rhythms, true music of insurgent masses, clangorous with echoes of tocsins and barricades and revolutions.
And now all talents, which hitherto had bloomed unseen, were in motion, wildly flitting to and fro. They were bent upon a surfeit of music; tuttis, finales, choruses must be performed.
The "Golden" sonata is, after all, a fair representative. If the last movement seems as most of the finales of all the composers until Beethoven do seem a trifle light and insignificant after the almost tragic seriousness of the largo, we must bear in mind that it was very frequently part of Purcell's design to have a cheerful ending. Unfortunately, there is no good edition of the sonatas.
He flies from the world to the convent once more for shelter and consolation, followed by Leonora, who dies in his arms after she has obtained forgiveness. The music of the work is very dramatic in its character, some of the finales being the strongest Donizetti has written. The third act contains the beautiful aria, "O mio Fernando!" which is a favorite with all contraltos.
It is difficult to conceive what fire and devilry they get into these hammering finales; all go together, voices, hands, eyes, leaves, and fluttering finger-rings; the chorus swings to the eye, the song throbs on the ear; the faces are convulsed with enthusiasm and effort.
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