MUSICAL COMPOSITION

COLOUR 111unless he was qualifying for Bedlam. He knows, asevery sane and sound composer knows, that it is onlya secondary means to a primary end. It is the clothesof his subject. As the old masters drew all theirfigures nude, and added the draperies after their figureswere perfected, so the composer's colour should be the"high lights" which illuminate the beauty of hismelodic invention and of his perfection of detail. Thefading of Sir Joshua Reynolds' pigments has notdestroyed the beauty of his designs or the charm of hisconceptions. But if he had relied mainly on his perishablecolours, and scamped his drawing, his pictureswould have been long ago relegated to oblivion. Colouris a first-rate servant, but a very insidiously bad master.II. CHAMBER AND CONCERTED MUSICIn chamber music it is still less possible to rely oncolour as superior to design. It bears the samerelation to orchestral treatment that water-colours doto oils. The texture and the mediums are thinner,and flaws of workmanship are all the more obvious.But in music the mastery of the one is essential tothe mastery of the other. The writing of a trio orquartet for solo stringed instruments is the bestpossible training for the treatment of the body ofstrings in the orchestra. It will teach the composer(1) how much more richness can be obtained from achord of four notes in a string quartet than from thesame chord on the pianoforte; (2) how little is to begained . by unnecessary and superfluous doubling;(3) how to secure contrast with very limited material;(4) how much harm can be done by a single ill-fittingnote (even of semiquaver value); (5) how to attain