D’un Soir triste

D’un Soir triste is in the same triple-time metre and in a similar, if more sombre, modally influenced E minor as D’un Matin de printemps. Its main theme, introduced in the opening bars by clarinets, is a close variant of that of the companion piece, although at something like half the tempo and against dark accumulations of fifths in the strings it gives a quite different impression. Here too there is a more passionate middle section, this one beginning dramatically with a motif of descending semitones on trombones and tuba and ending on the height of a long crescendo with a sudden silence.

Again the composer again avoids an immediate return to the opening material, this time by interpolating what, even though it is still in triple time, can only be called a funeral march with dark off-beat colouring on harp and percussion. When the opening section is eventually recalled, in its unconsoling modal harmonies, it approaches a new height of despair. But just before the end there is a hint of reconciliation, or transfiguration even, as strings and harp catch a brief glimpse of radiant E major harmonies and sustain their faith into the attenuated closing bars.