(The score contains extracts from the conversation of the White Knight,
and an account of his leave-taking.)
He was a toy Don Quixote, mild, chivalrous, ridiculous, and rather
touching. He carried a mouse-trap on his saddle-bow, “because, if they
do come, I don’t choose to have them running about.” He couldn’t ride
very well, but he was a gentle soul, with good intentions. There are
two themes: the first, a sort of instrumental prance, being the
Knight’s own conception of himself as a slashing, dare-devil fellow.
The second is bland, mellifluous, a little sentimental—much more like
the Knight as he really was. The first theme starts off bravely, but
falls out of the saddle before very long, and has to give way to the
second. The two alternate, in various guises, until the end, when the
Knight rides off, with Alice waving her handkerchief—he thought it
would encourage him if she did.
PETER ILITCH
TCHAIKOVSKY
(Born at Votkinsk, in the government of Viatka, Russia, May 7, 1840;
died at St. Petersburg, November 6, 1893)
It is true that in more than one page of his symphonies Tchaikovsky
narrowly escapes the reproach of vulgarity; but the earnestness, the
sincerity of the speech makes its way even before the development and
the amplification make them seem inevitable. The heart of Tchaikovsky
was that of a little child; the brain was that of a man weary of the
world and all its vanities. And so we have the singular phenomenon of
naïveté, accompanied by a super-refined skill—and all this in the body
and mind of a man fundamentally oriental in his tastes and especially in
his love of surprising or monotonous rhythms and gorgeous colors. The
very modernity of Tchaikovsky, his closeness to us as the spokesman of
the things we think and dare not say—these qualities may war against his
lasting fame; but in our day and generation he is the supreme
interpreter by music of elemental and emotional thought. The emptiness
of life obsessed him, and in the expression of his thought he is again
the man of his period. When faith returns again to the world, his music
may be studied with interest and curiosity as an important document in
sociology. But in the present we are under his mighty spell.