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The Niblungs are the antipodes in character of the giants—cunning, resourceful, industrious. Intellectually they are schemers and tricksters; by occupation they are smiths. Wagner delineates these activities, the mental as well as the manual, in the orchestral introduction to "Siegfried." A descending figure (a), (two thirds at the interval of a seventh) characterizes the brooding thoughtfulness, the cogitation of Mime; the fact that the dwarf is a Niblung Wagner publishes by means of a rhythmical phrase like the pounding of hammers (b):

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Sometimes Wagner becomes frankly delineative or descriptive, utilizing imitation of nature where it will be effective, as in the phrases associated with the Rhine and its denizens—the nixies whom he calls Daughters of the Rhine. The slow undulation of water in its depths, the flux and reflux of the element, the ripples on its surface, the motions of the swimmers, are all pictured to the ear (if I may be permitted to say so) in the melodies of the Rhine and the nixies whose home the river is, and the changes of time and treatment to which those melodies are subjected. The fitful, flickering, crackling crepitation of fire furnishes a suggestion for the phrase which is typical of Loge, the fire-god, whether he appears in his elemental form, as in the finale of "Die Walküre," or bodily as the incarnation of the spirit of mischief in "Das Rheingold:"