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This phrase is not often used, but whenever it occurs in the music its mysteriousness arrests attention. What is the source of that mysteriousness? Nothing else than indefiniteness, vagueness of mode. The closing harmony is an empty fifth; we do not know whether it is major or minor, because the determining interval is lacking. Supply a major third and it is major, a minor third and it is minor; in either case, however, the mystical property of the phrase, the element which establishes its propriety, vanishes.

There are many of these typical phrases primarily associated with personages, whose delineation goes to moods and moral traits. There are others that are frankly delineative of externals. The giants in "Das Rheingold" are the representatives of brute force. They are heavy-witted as well as heavy-footed, and their stupidity and clumsiness are aptly characterized in their melody:

(Fasolt and Fafner, of gigantic stature,
armed with strong staves, enter.)

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The Niblungs are the antipodes in character of the giants—cunning, resourceful, industrious. Intellectually they are schemers and tricksters; by occupation they are smiths. Wagner delineates these activities, the mental as well as the manual, in the orchestral introduction to "Siegfried." A descending figure (a), (two thirds at the interval of a seventh) characterizes the brooding thoughtfulness, the cogitation of Mime; the fact that the dwarf is a Niblung Wagner publishes by means of a rhythmical phrase like the pounding of hammers (b):

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