| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: solemn, reverts to the sublime ideas of the invocation, and mingles,
nevertheless, with the joy of the heathen people. This transition
combines the heavenly and the earthly in a way which genius alone
could invent, giving the /andante/ of this quintette a glow of color
that I can only compare to the light thrown by Titian on his Divine
Persons. Did you observe the exquisite interweaving of the voices? the
clever entrances by which the composer has grouped them round the main
idea given out by the orchestra? the learned progressions that prepare
us for the festal /allegro/? Did you not get a glimpse, as it were, of
dancing groups, the dizzy round of a whole nation escaped from danger?
And when the clarionet gives the signal for the /stretto/,--'/Voci di
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: You know, the women in wrappers, just blobs of flesh trying
to get cool. And the young girls in their pink silk dresses
and white shoes, and the boys on the street corners, calling
to them. Babies all over the sidewalks and streets, and the
men who weren't in the mills--you know how they look in
their Sunday shirtsleeves, with their flat faces, and high
cheekbones, and their great brown hands with the broken
nails. Hunkies. Well, at five the motor cars began
whizzing by from the country roads back to Chicago.
You have to go back that way. Just then the five o'clock
whistles blew and the day shift came off. There was a great
Fanny Herself |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare: Nor none so honest, Arcite.
ARCITE.
That's no matter,
Wee'l argue that hereafter: Come, take courage;
You shall not dye thus beastly: here, Sir, drinke;
I know you are faint: then ile talke further with you.
PALAMON.
Arcite, thou mightst now poyson me.
ARCITE.
I might,
But I must feare you first: Sit downe, and, good, now
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