Now to friendly purling of playful wavelets, the sea moves in shifting harmonies. In sudden climax the motion of the waves fills all the brass in triumphant paean, in the gleam of high noon.
II.—Play of the Waves. There is a poetic background as for the play of legend. We seem to be watching the sea from a window in the castle of Pelléas. For there is a touch of dim romance in a phrase of the clarinet.
The movement of waves is clear, and the unconscious concert of sea-sounds, the deeper pulse of ocean (in the horns), the flowing ripples, the sharp dash of lighter surf (in the Glockenspiel), all with a constant tremor, an instability of element (in trembling strings). We cannot help feeling the illusion of scene in the impersonal play of natural sounds. Anon will come a shock of exquisite sweetness that must have something of human. And then follows a resonant clash with spray of colliding seas.
Here the story of the waves begins, and there are clearly two roles.
To light lapping and cradling of waters the wood sings the simple lay, while strings discourse in quicker, higher phrase. The parts are reversed. A shower of chilling wave (in gliding harps) breaks the thread.
Now golden tones (of horns) sound a mystic tale of one of the former figures. The scene shimmers
in sparkling, glinting waters (with harp and trilling wood and strings). But against the soothing background the story (of English horn) has a chill, ominous strain.
With the returning main song comes the passionate crisis, and we are back in the mere plash and play of impersonal waves.