half-condescension

Updated: April 30, 2025

The marching chorus halts briefly when the clarinet begins again a mystic verse on the strain of the call, where the descending phrase is intermingled in the horns and strings. There is a new horizon here. We can no longer speak with half-condescension of Italian simplicity, though another kind of primal feeling is mingled in a breadth of symphonic vein.

Philip H. Goepp - Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies