[Between 1906 and 1939] my style has become much more profound and I have much difficulty in making the ideas which I wrote down many years ago without too much thought (rightly trusting to my feeling for design) conform to my present demand for a high degree of “visible” logic. This is now one of my greatest difficulties, for it also affects the material of the piece.
… This material is very good: expressive, characteristic, rich, and interesting. But it is meant to be carried out in the manner which I was capable of at the time of the Second Quartet.
The first movement is finished. I have altered very little; only the ending is entirely new, and the instrumentation. In a few places I have altered the harmonization, and I have changed the accompaniment figures rather frequently. After numerous experiments, I decided to rework these completely. I am very well satisfied with the movement. Besides, it is easy to play; very easy …
Now I am working on the second movement. If I succeed in finishing it, it will be quite effective: a very lively Allegro … The last movement [eventually the end of the second movement] is an “epilogue”, which does bring thematically new material… The musical and “psychic” problems are presented exhaustively in the two completed movements; the final movement merely appends, so to speak, certain “observations”.

I find the strings too noisy, and this is because each of the staccatos marked is played sforzato instead of being played as an unusually short note. For me, the noise of the strings is so distorting that the winds do not come out plastically enough. [Apropos] the detached notes, [they] were mostly played as staccatos. This is wrong—at least in my music. I really mean that each note should be bowed — or breathed — separately (8th January, 1941).

If I am to be honest and say something about my works (which I do not willingly do, since I actually write them in order to conceal myself thoroughly behind them, so that I will not be seen), it could only be this: It is not meant symbolically, but only envisioned and felt. Not thought at all. Colour, noises, lights, sounds, movements, looks, gestures — in short, the media which make up the ingredients of the stage — are to be linked to one another in a varied way. Nothing more than that. It meant something to my emotions as I wrote it down … I don’t want to be understood: I want to express myself — but I hope that I will be misunderstood.
Scene Three begins with a unison figure in bass octaves (lower strings, harp, bass clarinet, bassoons) with the character of a fugue subject. The second entrance repeats the rhythm of the subject but not the notes. The Man goes to a cave where he discovers a goldsmith’s shop with several workers. In the middle is an anvil, a huge hammer under it. As the Man contemplates the workers, he remarks that what they are doing can be done more simply. He goes to the anvil, places a block of gold on it, then brings the hammer down on it, splitting the anvil and allowing the gold to fall into the cleft. The workers had been preparing to stop him, but when he retrieves a perfect diadem set with precious stones they express wonder at the achievement. (The glitter of the jewel is evoked by a mixture of trills and flutter-tonguing in the wind instruments.) Eventually, after he gives his masterpiece to them, they decide to attack him, at which point the scene changes. The woman returns, now naked to the hip on her left side, and the “elegant gentleman” returns as well. He follows the woman, who climbs to the top of a plateau. The Man pursues her through rocky terrain. The woman attains a higher elevation and dislodges a boulder toward the Man, who is standing below, hitting and burying him. The Fourth Scene returns to the first, with, at the end, the chorus mocking the Man: “Must you live again what you have so often lived? You poor fool!”