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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: music, the clumping of the giants, the tune of the young
woodsman's horn, the trilling of the bird, the dragon music and
nightmare music and thunder and lightning music, the profusion of
simple melody, the sensuous charm of the orchestration: in short,
the vast extent of common ground between The Ring and the
ordinary music we use for play and pleasure. Hence it is that the
four separate music-plays of which it is built have become
popular throughout Europe as operas. We shall presently see that
one of them, Night Falls On The Gods, actually is an opera.
It is generally understood, however, that there is an inner ring
of superior persons to whom the whole work has a most urgent and
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