| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: understands the great end of music, or acts only on instinct, I know
not; but he is the first singer who ever satisfied me. I shall not die
without hearing a /cadenza/ executed as I have heard them in my
dreams, waking with a feeling as though the sounds were floating in
the air. The clear /cadenza/ is the highest achievement of art; it is
the arabesque, decorating the finest room in the house; a shade too
little and it is nothing, a touch too much and all is confusion. Its
task is to awake in the soul a thousand dormant ideas; it flies up and
sweeps through space, scattering seeds in the air to be taken in by
our ears and blossom in our heart. Believe me, in painting his Saint-
Cecilia, Raphael gave the preference to music over poetry. And he was
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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 In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: bench, gnadige Frau?"
He sat down, tugging at a white-paper package in the tail pocket of his
coat.
"Cherries," he said, nodding and smiling. "There is nothing like cherries
for producing free saliva after trombone playing, especially after Grieg's
'Ich Liebe Dich.' Those sustained blasts on 'liebe' make my throat as dry
as a railway tunnel. Have some?" He shook the bag at me.
"I prefer watching you eat them."
"Ah, ha!" He crossed his legs, sticking the cherry bag between his knees,
to leave both hands free. "Psychologically I understood your refusal. It
is your innate feminine delicacy in preferring etherealised sensations...Or
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