| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: National Guard's uniform, impelled thereto by the idea of making some
adequate return for the money; an idea that sometimes slips into a
tradesman's head when he has been prodigiously overpaid for goods of
no great value. He took up his cap, buckled on his sabre, and came out
in full dress. But his wife had had time to reflect, and reflection,
as not unfrequently happens, closed the hand that kindly intentions
had opened. Feeling frightened and uneasy lest her husband might be
drawn into something unpleasant, she tried to catch at the skirt of
his coat, to hold him back, but he, good soul, obeying his charitable
first thought, brought out his offer to see the lady home, before his
wife could stop him.
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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 The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: gallop.
Other themes denote objects which cannot be imitatively suggested
by music: for instance, music cannot suggest a ring, and cannot
suggest gold; yet each of these has a representative theme which
pervades the score in all directions. In the case of the gold the
association is established by the very salient way in which the
orchestra breaks into the pretty theme in the first act of The
Rhine Gold at the moment when the sunrays strike down through the
water and light up the glittering treasure, "hitherto invisible.
The reference of the strange little theme of the wishing cap is
equally manifest from the first, since the spectator's attention
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