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With this profound generalisation in what he called his mind, but what was really his temper, he rode sullenly away. He did not hear how she lingered caressingly over the last phrases of the humoreske, playing them very softly, with her blond head bent over the piano, as if she were trying to recall something.
In her shining eyes there was a strange, sweet, deep smile. She leaned over him, and he felt the warmth of her breath on his forehead as she whispered: "Richard, couldn't you even ask me for the humoreske?" Three men were taking a walk together, as they said, just to while away the time. The first man intended to go Somewhere, to look at a piece of property which he was considering.
In a more purely musical manner, his feelings took shape in such works as his "Daidsbündler" Dances, the "Chiarina" of the Carnival, the F-Sharp Minor Sonata, the Kreisleriana, the Humoreske, the Novelettes, and the Nocturnes, truly an offering of rare beauty, and well worthy to express the feelings of the inspired lover.
A double character has the third movement as the title shows, though in a broadest sense it could all be taken as a Humoreske. With a jaunty lilt of skipping strings the lower reeds strike the capricious tune, where the full chorus soon falls in. The answering melody, with more of sentiment, though always in graceful swing with tricksy attendant figures, has a longer song.
Then with a firmer touch she began to play the humoreske of Dvorák, but with a new phrasing, a new expression. It was full of an infinite tenderness, a great longing, a sweetness of distant and remembered joy.
It was then that he heard the notes of the humoreske coming down into the deserted street and stood still to listen. The memories of the perfect summer floated around him again. Something in the music seemed to call to him, to plead with him, to try to console and cheer him with a wonderful, playful tenderness like the pure wordless sympathy of a child.
Arthur Whiting. Copyright, 1895, by G. Schirmer. Four works of his for the piano are: "Six Bagatelles," of which the "Caprice" has a charming infectious coda, while the "Humoreske" is less simple, and also less amusing. The "Album Leaf" is a pleasing whimsy, and the "Idylle" is as delicate as fleece. Of the three "Characteristic Waltzes," the "Valse Sentimentale" is by far the most interesting.
The humoreske came from her lightly moving hands as it had come on that spring evening, quaint, tender, consoling, caressing, but now with a new accent of joy in it, a quicker, almost exulting movement in the dancing passages. Richard listened, standing close behind her, watching the play of her firm, rounded fingers, breathing the fragrance that rose from her hair and her white neck.
She was playing for her own pleasure now just to relieve the tension of her feelings by letting them flow out on the rhythmic current of music. It was her favourite piece, that magical humoreske by Dvorák, which is like an April day, full of smiles and tears, pleading and laughter. The clear notes came out under her exquisite touch with a penetrating charm of airy, graceful fantasy.
As in all of MacDowell's writing, its allegiance is to the basic principles of structure and design, rather than to a traditional and arbitrary formula. The succeeding opus , comprising the "Humoreske," "March," "Cradle Song," and "Czardas," is unimportant. Of the four pieces the gracious "Cradle Song" is of the most worth.
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