| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: much less have woven several of them together with so apt a
harmony that even when the composer is unmoved its progressions
saturate themselves with the emotion which (as modern critics are
a little apt to forget) springs as warmly from our delicately
touched admiration as from our sympathies, and sometimes makes us
give a composer credit for pathetic intentions which he does not
entertain, just as a boy imagines a treasure of tenderness and
noble wisdom in the beauty of a woman. Besides, Bach set comic
dialogue to music exactly as he set the recitatives of the
Passion, there being for him, apparently, only one recitative
possible, and that the musically best. He reserved the expression
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: yourself answerable for the crimes he will commit?"
"It is all of a piece," said Benassis. "If the mayors kept their roads
in better order, there would not be so many footpaths. And if the
members of Municipal Councils knew a little better, they would uphold
the small landowner and the mayor when the two combine to oppose the
establishment of unfair easements. The fact that chateau, cottage,
field, and tree are all equally sacred would then be brought home in
every way to the ignorant; they would be made to understand that Right
is just the same in all cases, whether the value of the property in
question be large or small. But such salutary changes cannot be
brought about all at once. They depend almost entirely on the moral
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: sensuous imaginations were wandering. The doctor, too, tried to
understand, and he understood, for he was one of the Pleiades of
genius belonging to the Paris school of medicine, from which a true
physician comes out as much a metaphysician as an accomplished
analyst.
"Do you understand them?" said Emilio to Vendramin as they left the
cafe at two in the morning.
"Yes, my dear boy," said Vendramin, taking Emilio home with him.
"Those two men are of the legion of unearthly spirits to whom it is
given here below to escape from the wrappings of the flesh, who can
fly on the shoulders of the queen of witchcraft up to the blue
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: echoed to his preaching.
Hard by the reformer, a bandy-legged and garlanded
Charles Second, made of lead, bestrides a tun-bellied
charger. The King has his backed turned, and, as you
look, seems to be trotting clumsily away from such a
dangerous neighbour. Often, for hours together, these
two will be alone in the Close, for it lies out of the
way of all but legal traffic. On one side the south wall
of the church, on the other the arcades of the Parliament
House, enclose this irregular bight of causeway and
describe their shadows on it in the sun. At either end,
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