The standard symphonies, their history, their music, and their composers; a handbook

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896 edition. Excerpt: ...horn sounds Faust's love motive, which we have already encountered in the first movement, followed by the love-scene, which is wrought out with fascinating skill, rising to the ecstasy of passion and dying away in gentle content. The third movement, " Mephistopheles," takes the place of the Scherzo in the regular form. It typifies the appearance of the spirit who denies, with all his cynicism and sneers. Liszt has indicated these qualities in a subtle way. Mephistopheles has no symbolical theme. His constant purpose is to satirize and pervert the motives of his victim, and he begins his cynical work at once. The themes which characterize Faust in the opening movement reappear, but they are only distorted and caricatured reminiscences, showing the power which the evil principle has gained over its intended victim. The love motive is burlesqued and sneered at, but after the fiend has satisfied his malicious humor there comes a solemn episode. The uproar ceases, and in the grateful silence is heard the tender Gretchen motive in all its beauty. Even Mephistopheles cannot withstand its pure influence. He leaves the field discomfited; and then by a sudden transition we pass to the purer heights. The solemn strains of the organ are heard, and a mannerchor, the Chorus Mysticus, intones, a la capella, the chant:--"All things transitory But as symbols are sent: Earth's insufficiency Here grows to event: The Indescribable Here it is done. The Woman-soul leadeth us Upward and on." A solo tenor enters with the Gretchen motive, and the symphony comes to its mystic and triumphant close. A SYMPHONY TO DANTE'S "DIVINA COMMEDIA." 1. Inferno. 2. PURGATORIO. MAGNIFICAT. Liszt's symphony to the " Divina Commedia" of...