Or the great “Shepherds’ Feast” with the twanging musettes of Taverni or Choisy, and the lightly rocking rhythms. Or the five-act Ballet of the “Pomp of the great and ancient Menestrandise.”[43] Act I., the pompous entry of the Notables and sworn probationers. Act II., a bag-pipe song of the hurdy-gurdy-men and beggars. Act III., a joyous dance of the jugglers, clog-dancers, and Merry-Andrews with bears and monkeys. Act IV., a duet of the crazy and the lame. Act V., breaking up of the whole troop by the animals--furious étude in semiquavers. Next, the cycle of the old and young men; the former sober, the latter happy. [Illustration] But, before all, that original of Schumann’s Carnival, “Les Folies françaises ou les Dominos.” Maidenhood in invisible colours, Shame in rose, Impetuosity in red, Hope in green, Faithfulness in blue, Perseverance in gray, Longing in violet, Coquetry in a domino of many colours, the old gallants in purple and gold, the cuckolds in brown, silent Jealousy in dark gray, Rage and Desperation in black. Externally the form is that of a great ballet of the time; internally it is the variation of collected pieces on a single harmonic succession, its contents are the allusions easily comprehended at the time; the characterisation is carried through with great skill; but its musical setting is even shorter than is usually the case with Couperin’s clavier-pieces. The Preludes, which Couperin appended to his “Art de Toucher le clavecin,” he named, in accordance with their _ad libitum_ performance, the Prose of clavier-literature. These dances and pictures were to him the poetry, rhymed and rhythmical. And it was precisely their formal completion which was of importance for the future of clavier-literature. We see the forms developing. In his best pieces the Sonata is already foreshadowed. The fulness of motives, as they occur to him in his two best compositions, the splendid “Favorite” and the stupendous “Passacaille,” is elsewhere thematically limited. In the recapitulation of the main theme at the beginning of the second part of the pieces, in the rhythmic similarity between the rondo-motive and its “couplets,” in many a thematic working-out, shown for example in “La Trophée” with its wonderfully modern sonata-style, lies the promise of thematically-developed music of succeeding generations. To the same purpose is his increasing sense for the association of several pieces. The many slow second pieces, or the popular dances such as the Polonaise, the Sezile, the Musette, which form the concluding parts of a group, the repetition of the first part after the second, the divisions into slow movement, slower, and lighter, which are specially visible in “La Triomphante,” and “Les Bacchanales”--all these are as much the germ of the future sonata arrangement, as the severer thematic was the germ of sonata-playing. The charm for us lies in observing, in the springtime of art, the