| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: That the war-birds ever witnessed.
All a Summer's day it lasted,
From the sunrise to the sunset;
For the shafts of Hiawatha
Harmless hit the shirt of wampum,
Harmless fell the blows he dealt it
With his mittens, Minjekahwun,
Harmless fell the heavy war-club;
It could dash the rocks asunder,
But it could not break the meshes
Of that magic shirt of wampum.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: has this been the fate!
"But there surely is a moment when Tantalus rebels, crosses his
arms, and defies hell, throwing up his part of the eternal dupe.
That is what I shall come to if anything should thwart my plan;
if, after stooping to the dust of provincial life, prowling like a
starving tiger round these tradesmen, these electors, to secure
their votes; if, after wrangling in these squalid cases, and
giving them my time--the time I might have spent on Lago Maggiore,
seeing the waters she sees, basking in her gaze, hearing her voice
--if, after all, I failed to scale the tribune and conquer the
glory that should surround the name that is to succeed to that of
Albert Savarus |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: go at it with a will, showing off the power of their voices,
following each other in canonic imitation, singing together in
thirds and sixths, and finishing with a lurid unison, quite in
the manner of Ruy Gomez and Ernani, or Othello and Iago. Then
without further ado Siegfried departs on his expedition, taking
Gunther with him to the foot of the mountain, and leaving Hagen
to guard the hall and sing a very fine solo which has often
figured in the programs of the Richter concerts, explaining that
his interest in the affair is that Siegfried will bring back the
Ring, and that he, Hagen, will presently contrive to possess
himself of that Ring and become Plutonic master of the world.
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Cavalry General by Xenophon: all, they make a final charge across the field, before dismissal;
after which they come to a halt en masse, in battle order; and, as now
customary,[19] ride up to salute the senate, and disband. These
evolutions will at once approve themselves, I think, not only for
their novelty, but for their resemblacne to real warfare. The notion
that the hipparch is to ride at a slower pace than his phylarchs, and
to handle his horse precisely in their style, seems to me below the
dignity of the office.
[16] In the hippodrome near Munychia, I suppose.
[17] Lit. ". . . it would be beautiful to form with extended front, so
as to fill the hippodrome with horses and drive out the people
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