first movement from the program: Manfred wanders in the Alpine mountains. His life is shattered, but he is obsessed with life's unanswerable questions. In life nothing remains for him except memories. Images of his ideal Astarte permeate his thoughts, and he vainly calls to her. Only the echo from the cliffs repeats her name. Memories and thoughts bum and gnaw at him. He seeks and begs for oblivion, which no-one can give him. It is not hard to see how these carefully selected elements might appeal to Tchaikovsky. Free from having to reconcile the first movement to sonata form, Tchaikovsky constructs his own form which succeeds well as an expression of the program. A massive opening motive associated with Manfred himself expresses both the strength and gloom of his character. This motive returns at crucial parts to identify Manfred's part in the action. Beneath this theme is a musical structure that, while not conforming to the traditional recapitulation of themes in sonata form, succeeds in moving forward without losing unity or degenerating into a series of episodes. It is a musical portrait of the guilty, doomed sensibility, drawn strongly as Berlioz' Harold. This was perhaps the aspect of Byron which appealed most vividly to Russians; it also may have touched closely on Tchaikovsky's own situation. The two inner movements work as effective structural contrasts to the opening drama. The waterfall in the second movement gives Tchaikovsky the opportunity for one of his longest and most beautifully worked out scherzos, scored with a delicacy that Berlioz might have admired; Tchaikovsky's Alpine experiences might have come in handy here. For the third movement pastorale, Balakirev had hoped for a Russian version of the corresponding movement from the Symphonie fantastique. Tchaikovsky's version is more conventional, with two simple themes—one graceful, the other more roughly rustic. It forms in its static quality an idealized retreat before the turmoil of the finale. The finale reflects Harold en Italie in the exuberance of the revelling. Tchaikovsky manages to add a fugue, a return of Astarte and a death scene at the end.' Nevertheless, musicologist David Brown considered the finale the weakest part of Manfred, not because of the music itself but of the programme. Up to this point, Brown writes, Tchaikovsky had very successfully reconciled extramusical specifications with musical structure. Now the program takes over, resulting in a fragmented movement with musical disruption and non sequiturs.