# Philip Hale's Boston Symphony Programme Notes

Author: Hale, Philip, 1854-1934; Burk, John N. (John Naglee), 1891-1967 [Editor]; Gilman, Lawrence, 1878-1939 [Editor]

Genre: Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches

Language: English

License: Public domain

Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56208

Amazon editions: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Philip+Hale%27s+Boston+Symphony+Programme+Notes+Hale&tag=cyberlibrar00-20

## Summary

_Festivals_, with its strange processional march, its whirring capriciousness, makes a more direct appeal. Does the third movement answer the old question put by Tiberius to the grammarians and repeated by Sir Thomas Browne, “What song did the sirens sing?” Here is music of waves and of sea-women: music that never was heard on a casino-lined coast, but sounds that might go with “The light that never was, on sea or land.” Here is music that is subtly poetic, music of ineffable beauty. Suppose that Debussy had put words to this song; how he would have cheapened the nocturne! To each hearer on the ship of Ulysses, or to each hearer of Debussy’s music, the sirens sang of what might well lure...

## Chapters

- [c. Sirènes](https://www.cyberlibrary.org/en/books/philip-hale-s-boston-symphony-programme-notes-56208/chapters/1/index.md)
- [Act I. The storm section over, there is an episodic _andante_ in F major](https://www.cyberlibrary.org/en/books/philip-hale-s-boston-symphony-programme-notes-56208/chapters/2/index.md)