The king learns the murder of his son by the hands of the avenging sisters.

Swift rage the chords, through the passions of fear, of horror, of fury, and dismay.

The father pursues the sisters.

Hark! what changes the dread--the discord--into that long, silvery, mournful music?
The transformation is completed; and Philomel, now the nightingale, pours from the myrtle-bough the full, liquid, subduing notes that are to tell evermore to the world the history of her woes and wrongs.

Now, it was in the midst of this complicated and difficult attempt that the health of the over-tasked musician, excited alike by past triumph and new ambition, suddenly gave way.