I interpret the "realm of love" or second movement of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43 as nostalgic and use it as a case study for illustrating how nostalgia may be signified musically within a work. Drawing on Davis's simple and reflexive nostalgia, I propose the following three conditions for identifying nostalgia in music: 1) the demarcation of time (past from present), 2) an allusion to an idealized past, and 3) the artificiality of the allusion. Hatten's tropes of temporality (a shift in temporality and a parenthetical insertion) and mapping time onto tonal areas (subdominant = past) satisfy Condition 1. Condition 2 is achieved through the use of musical topics and styles that are indexical of a particular idealized past. Condition 3 is fulfilled when these idealized musical allusions feature erroneous elements or references, revealing the artificial construction of the memory.

Movement II (variations 12-18) acts as a large-scale parenthetical insertion. A dream-like shift in temporality from the present (A minor) to the idealized past occurs during the transitional 11th variation (D minor), while variation 18 (D♭ major) abruptly shifts back to tonic in the introduction to variation 19. An idealized past is most prominently referenced in the outermost variations of movement II: variation 12 is a lyrical minuet evoking an idealized urban setting, while variation 18's stile appassionata topic is a signifier for the recollection of a loved one. Inaccuracies in both of these variations reveal their artificial and idealized construction.