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The "Eroica" bears the motto, "Flos regum Arthuris," and as a further index to its content MacDowell has given this explanation: "While not exactly programme music," he says, "I had in mind the Arthurian legend when writing this work. The first movement typifies the coming of Arthur. The scherzo was suggested by a picture of Doré showing a knight in the woods surrounded by elves.
The Scherzo Op. 31, of Chopin, and the Liszt Rhapsodies he can hear in the concert room, where he can become familiar with most of the famous piano compositions. Why should he not learn to know many less hackneyed pieces, which do not so frequently appear on concert programs? "Herein lies one of the great opportunities for the broad-minded teacher to be individual in his work.
In theory, Janet was not a pianist, and she never played solos, nor accompanied songs; but in the actual practice of duet-playing her sympathetic presence of mind at difficult crises of the music caused her to be esteemed by Tom, the expert and enthusiast, as superior to all other performers in the family. Hilda listened with pleasure and with exaltation to the scherzo.
A new mystic play of the quicker motto, answered by the second theme, leads to an overpowering blast of the motto in slowest notes of brass and reed, ending in a final fanfare. All lightness is the Scherzo, though we cannot escape a Russian vein of minor even in the dance. A rapid melody has a kind of perpetual motion in the strings, with mimicking echoes in the wood.
His "Scherzo fantastique," inspired by Maeterlinck's Life of the Bee, which was produced in 1908, attracted the attention of Sergei Diaghilew to the young composer, and secured him a commission to write a ballet for Diaghilew's organization. The immediate result was "L'Oiseau de feu," which was composed and produced in 1910.
How full it can be of expressiveness you know from the Songs without Words by Mendelssohn, and the Nocturnes of Chopin; how full of flickering humor you hear in the Scherzo of a Beethoven symphony; how full of deep solemnity and grief one feels in the funeral marches. This school of composition has been followed by both the greater and the lesser masters.
Then he took the theme of Chopin's E flat minor Scherzo, and he juggled with it, spun it into fine fibres of tone, dashed it down yawning and serried harmonic abysses. He was magnificent as he put forth all the varied resources of his art. Constantia, her cheeks ablaze, her lips parted, interposed a fan between her eyes and the light. There was something dangerous and passionate in her regard.
The scherzo, with its trio, is not a form for minute painting of how the hero comes and saves; nor is this necessary; it has been sufficiently indicated in the first movement. We agree with Marx in feeling the finale to be a picture of the blessings of that peace and quiet which the hero once more restores, but peace and quiet where liberty and law, justice and order reign.
I will not regard them as past and gone; I will rather regard them as the slow sweet prelude of the great symphony; if I am now tossed upon the melancholy and broken waves of some vehement scherzo of life, the subject is but working itself out, and I will strive to apprehend it even here. There are other movements that await me, as wonderful, as sweet.
Then, finally, and against the frantic negative pantomime of his manager, a scherzo, played so lacily that it swept the house in lightest laughter.
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