On dancing ripples, a nixie is laughing to echoing horns and lures us back to the story.
Later, it seems, two mermaids sing in twining duet. In a warm hue of light the horns sound a weird tale. It is taken up by teasing chorus of lighter voices. In the growing volume sounds a clear, almost martial call of the brass.
In a new shade of scene we recover the lost burden of song; the original figures appear (in the slower air of trembling strings and the quicker play of reed, harp and bells), and wander through ever new, moving phases. A shower of chords (in strings and shaking brass) brings back the ominous melody, amidst a chorus of light chatter, but firmly resting on a warm background of harmony. And the strain roves on generous path and rises out of all its gloom to a burst of profound cheer.
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