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Danish March, and I take Sir George Henschel's word for it that it is one. It is very long, and serves to bring the King, Queen, and court on and off whenever necessary. The prelude to Act ii. is called
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Ophelia,
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Ophelia's Death, is a funeral march for muted strings and _timpani_. There is very effective melodrama music while the Queen describes Ophelia's death, muted strings _pianissimo_, and the clarinets playing broken snatches of the mad songs. The prelude to Act v. is a pastorale for full orchestra, and the churchyard music is for solo organ on stage. At the end of the whole play, at the cue
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And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest, a female chorus on the stage sings, in three parts,
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Good-night, sweet Prince, good-night,
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Fantasy Overture, which I discuss later as a separate piece of orchestral music, +Tschaikowsky+ composed an overture, _entr'actes_, and full incidental music for _Hamlet_. It was written for a special production at Petrograd, and is much the finest music for the play. The whole is composed for small orchestra, double wood wind, two horns, two trumpets, trombone, and drums, and these limitations seem to have suited Tschaikowsky's genius particularly well. The overture is founded on the themes of the
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Fantasy Overture, but is considerably shorter. The Ghost music is very {24} awe-inspiring and original, very _piano_, deep notes on the trombone and trumpets, combined with strange, eccentric scale passages on the clarinets. The fanfares throughout are particularly fine, the first being an elaborate and long flourish in nine-eight rhythm, scored for the full brass, but, curiously enough, without kettledrums; nor are these used in any of the subsequent fanfares. Now, Shakespeare in his text makes Hamlet say (Act i., Scene 4),
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The King doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse, Keeps wassail, and the swaggering upspring reels. And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his pledge. And, later (Act v., Scene 2), the King says,
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Give me the cups; And let the kettle to the trumpet speak, The trumpet to the cannoneer without,