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Interest tempered the fright which Romulus and Moses felt when from the forward carriage came the sound of rasping oboes, belly-less fiddles, brazen tom-toms, and harsh cymbals, playing a dirge for little Wang Tai; playing less for godly protection of her tiny soul than for its exemption from the torture of devils.
"I am trembling still," said the ill-starred artist, "from the four bars of cymbals which pierced to my marrow as they opened that short, abrupt introduction with its solo for trombone, its flutes, oboes, and clarionet, all suggesting the most fantastic effects of color.
Eusebius played it altogether correctly. It is at once so mischievous and beautiful that Leporello listens behind the hedge, laughing and jesting that oboes and clarionettes enchantingly allure, and that the B flat major in full bloom correctly designates the first kiss of love.
The first subject is announced by the first violins against the full orchestra; the subsidiary theme is given to the flutes and oboes; after a powerful climax, and a beautiful subsidence of the storm in the lower strings, the second subject appears in the relative major with honeyed lyricism.
His Royal Highness was in his happiest mood, and his winning manners and elegant conversation soon chased away the cloud which, for a moment, had settled on the young lady's fair brow. The Grand Duke of Reisenburg was an enthusiastic lover of music, and his people were consequently music mad. The whole city were fiddling day and night, or blowing trumpets, oboes, and bassoons.
Christophe set the poem to music with great symphonic pictures, with soli and chorus, mock-heroic battles, riotous country fairs, vocal buffooneries, madrigals a la Jannequin, with tremendous childlike glee, a storm at sea, the Island of Bells, and, finally, a pastoral symphony, full of the air of the fields, and the blithe serenity of the flutes and oboes, and the clean-souled folk-songs of Old France.
It is broken in upon by a strange version of the great love song, agitato in oboes, losing all its queenly pace. As though in final answer comes again the ruthless phrase of horns, followed now by the original theme. Rapidamente in full force of strings comes the coursing strain of impetuous desire.
They sent up a prolonged medley of sounds, little minor chirps and cries from the violins, liquid runs and mellow gurgles from the oboes, flutes, and wood-wind instruments, and an occasional deep-toned purring from the bass viols. A bell rang faintly from behind the wings, the house lights sank, and the footlights blazed up.
The Pelléas theme, sung by two flutes, opens the brief introduction to the second act. It is repeated, interwoven with harp arpeggios. Immediately preceding the entrance of Pelléas and Mélisande a muted horn, two flutes, two oboes, and harp sound a chord of singularly liquid quality one of those fragmentary effects in the invention of which Debussy is so curiously happy.
The other elegant groups of figures which sport on the top of the dome the Cupids, the Loves, and the Graces! besides festoons of the freshest and most beautiful flowers, have each of them musical instruments in their hands, which by the exquisite and most expensive mechanism, are made to breathe forth sounds corresponding with the appearance of the several instruments, flutes, guitars, violins, clarionets, trumpets, horns, oboes, kettle-drums, &c.
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