with lower 8ve.)
(2d violins; percussion with cellos below)
(Harp with violas)
(Flutes with higher 8ve.)
(See page 104, line 11.)]

As in all fairy tales, the scene quickly vanishes. On dancing rays and
ripples is the laughing nixie; but suddenly breaks the first song of the
main figures. A climactic phrase of trumpets ends with a burst of all
the chorus on stirring harmony, where in diminishing strokes of bells
long rings the melodic note.

The teasing motive of the nixie returns while the trumpet sounds a
shadowy echo of its phrase, again to dying peal of bells. A chorus of
eerie voices sing the mocking air, and again sounds the refrain of
trumpet as in rebuke. On a tumult of teasing cries flashes a delivering
burst of brilliant light, and we are back in the first scene of the
story. Only the main figure is absent. And there is in the eager tension
of pace a quivering between joy and doubt. Then, in answer to the
lighter phrase of the other, is the returning figure with a new song now
of blended longing and content that soars into higher flights until a
mighty chorus repeats the strain that rises to triumphant height of joy
and transforms the mocking motive to the same mood.

But it is all a play of the waves. And we are left once more to the
impersonal scene where yet the fragrance of legend hovers over the dying
harmonies.

_III.--Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea._ Tumultuous is the humor of the
beginning; early sounds the stroke of wave of the first hour of the sea.
The muted trumpet blows a strain (to trembling strings) that takes us
back to the first (quoted) tune of the symphony in the wistful mood of
dawn. For a symphony it proves to be in the unity of themes and thought.
Now unmuted and unrestrained in conflict of crashing chords, the trumpet
blows again the motto of the roving sea. In various figures is the
pelagic motion, in continuous coursing strings, in the sweeping phrase
of the woodwind, or in the original wave-motion of the horns, now
unmuted.

The main burden is a plaint

[Music: (Woodwind in lower octaves
and touches of horns)
(_Animato_) _poco rit._
(Strings in higher and lower octaves)]

(in the wood) against the insistent surge (of strings), on a haunting
motive as of farewell or eventide, with much stress of pathos. It is
sung in sustained duet against a constant churning figure of the sea,
and it is varied by a dulcet strain that grows out of the wave-motive.

Indeed, the whole