ABSTRACT
The second movement opens with F major and G# minor triads, scored arrestingly for muted trumpets, doubled an octave higher by flutes and reinforced on the second chord by pizzicato strings and timpani. The chords have a forced, strained quality that carries the promise of a new emotional and metaphorical focus. The opening chords belong to a network of ideas that are transformed, with profound musical and expressive consequences, from one movement to the next. Thus, the two chords conclude the harmonic progression initiated in the final bars of preceding movement, though the radical change in sonority highlights the emotional distance that has been traversed during the second-long pause between movements. Both movements share the same formal structure, but progress through it at different rates. The dyads that dominate the harmony of the first movement are reworked as melodic intervals in the second, situated within drooping, descending patterns that are themselves free inversions of the predominantly ascending, striving horn melody.
