| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: The themes associated with the individual characters get stamped
on the memory easily by the simple association of the sound of
the theme with the appearance of the person indicated. Its
appropriateness is generally pretty obvious. Thus, the entry of
the giants Is made to a vigorous stumping, tramping measure.
Mimmy, being a quaint, weird old creature, has a quaint, weird
theme of two thin chords that creep down eerily one to the other.
Gutrune's theme is pretty and caressing: Gunther's bold, rough,
and commonplace. It is a favorite trick of Wagner's, when one of
his characters is killed on the stage, to make the theme attached
to that character weaken, fail, and fade away with a broken echo
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: the old housekeeper. The search in the church as well as in the
vestry was equally in vain. There was no trace to be found there
any more than in the house.
Meanwhile, during these hours of anxious seeking, the rumour of
another terrible crime had spread through the village, and a crowd
that grew from minute to minute gathered in front of the closed
gates to the rectory, in front of the church, the closed doors of
which did not open although it was a high feast day. The utter
silence from the steeple, where the bells hung mute, added to the
spreading terror. Finally the doctor came out from the rectory,
accompanied by the magistrate, and announced to the waiting
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: closing. She sat there, in the sunshiny dining-room, in her
fresh, white morning gown. She picked up her newspaper, opened
it; scanned it, put it down. For years, now, she had read her
newspaper in little gulps on the way downtown in crowded subway
or street-car. She could not accustom herself to this leisurely
scanning of the pages. She rose, went to the window, came back
to the table, stood there a moment, her eyes fixed on something
far away.
The swinging door between dining-room and butler's pantry opened.
Annie, in her neat blue-and-white stripes, stood before her.
"Shall it be steak or chops to-night, Mrs. Mc--Buck?"
Emma McChesney & Co. |
