I. The Distress of the People:

As with the Dionysian Fantasia, the slow introduction contains many of the work’s most important themes. Over a C tremolo, the movement begins with a Brucknerian horn call:

Ex. 1

A G major extension of this theme will gain significance as the work develops.

Ex. 2

After much C minor/E flat major heroism, we hear a more lyric theme

Ex. 3

further developed on the oboe and solo violin:

Ex. 4

With all its “völkisch” musical elements, there’s no doubt that Hausegger meant the music to be a tonal landscape of a rustic Germany of old, as characterized by this bucolic clarinet/horn theme.

Ex. 5

Von Hausegger’s Germany is as idealized as that of H.L. Mencken. However, a piercing diminished 9th chord (double reeds, stopped horns) breaks the mood. Over a G roll on the tympani and fragments of Ex. 5, the opening horn call returns and the pace picks up, accompanied by a descending wail on the woodwinds.

Ex. 6

As the tempo increases, we hear in the background a figure on the horns

Ex. 7

whose rhythms further propel the music into the fast main section, while tying into its march-like principle theme.

Ex. 8

Much of this allegro section is in C minor and reflects the peoples’ despair. The music has a sense of struggle, characterized by this sharply contoured theme, its initial figure derived from Ex. 6.

Ex. 9

It and the march theme are intertwined till the general mood becomes, if not calmer, quieter. Another significant theme appears on the English horn, expressing “a sense of longing for peace and repose”.

Ex. 10

Hausegger develops these themes, along with a chromatic descending countermelody on the violins, the whole leading to a majestic restatement of Ex. 2, combined with a variant of Ex. 10, as if in a pre-vision of hopeful times to be. (Ex. 11 next page)

Ex. 11

But that vision is fleeting. The music at first calms down, to rhythmic augmentations of Ex. 10. However, using Ex. 9 as a lever, the pace grows more urgent. The agitated music makes great interplay of the first bar of the march theme, driven by upwardly swirling chromatic triplets. Interspersed with Ex. 9, now scored with grinding weight on the brasses, the tension rises to a broad fff climax on an augmented version of Ex. 10, when the music breaks off on a diminished 7th chord.

A great calm o’erspreads the orchestra and in a warm, contrasting D major, we first hear the theme of Barbarossa himself. Adolf Schultze describes it as “a reminder to a beleaguered people to endure and remember their sleeping emperor and deliverer”.

Ex. 12

The feeling of unease resumes with Ex. 8, now taken up in canon. At its peak, we hear Ex. 10, the theme of longing, on all the woodwinds, with stabbing chords on the horns (not to mention a solid Brucknerian countertheme on the trombones):

Ex. 13

A short, chromatic rising and falling theme leads to a broad 3/2 restatement of Ex. 2, cut short by the reappearance of the first part of Barbarossa’s theme (trumpets in E major), like a war-cry. The march again takes up the pace. This time, as if to express further frustration, its phrase endings keep dissolving on a diminished 7th. These propel the movement to an abrupt C minor close, as final as a slamming door.