as well distinguished musically as they are at present.

One more illustration of the way in which the thematic system is worked.
There are two themes connected with Loki. One is a rapid, sinuous,
twisting, shifty semiquaver figure suggested by the unsubstantial,
elusive logic-spinning of the clever one's braincraft. The other is the
fire theme. In the first act of Siegfried, Mimmy makes his unavailing
attempt to explain fear to Siegfried. With the horror fresh upon him of
the sort of nightmare into which he has fallen after the departure
of the Wanderer, and which has taken the form, at once fanciful and
symbolic, of a delirious dread of light, he asks Siegfried whether he
has never, whilst wandering in the forest, had his heart set hammering
in frantic dread by the mysterious lights of the gloaming. To this,
Siegfried, greatly astonished, replies that on such occasions his heart
is altogether healthy and his sensations perfectly normal. Here Mimmy's
question is accompanied by the tremulous sounding of the fire theme with
its harmonies most oppressively disturbed and troubled; whereas with
Siegfried's reply they become quite clear and straightforward, making
the theme sound bold, brilliant, and serene. This is a typical instance
of the way in which the themes are used.

The thematic system gives symphonic interest, reasonableness, and unity
to the music, enabling the composer to exhaust every aspect and quality
of his melodic material, and, in Beethoven's manner, to work miracles
of beauty, expression and significance with the briefest phrases. As a
set-off against this, it has led Wagner to indulge in repetitions that
would be intolerable in a purely dramatic work. Almost the first thing
that a dramatist has to learn in constructing a play is that the persons
must not come on the stage in the second act and tell one another at
great length what the audience has already seen pass before its eyes
in the first act. The extent to which Wagner has been seduced into
violating this rule by his affection for his themes is startling to
a practiced playwright. Siegfried inherits from Wotan a mania for
autobiography which leads him to inflict on every one he meets the
story of Mimmy and the dragon, although the audience have spent a whole
evening witnessing the events he is narrating. Hagen tells the story
to Gunther; and that same night Alberic's ghost tells it over again to
Hagen, who knows it already as well as the audience.