MUSICAL COMPOSITION

118 MUSICAL COMPOSITIONinto brilliancy. A slight ritenuto or accelerando maymake a phrase lilt, when without them it hangs fire.A violin passage carelessly bowed may destroy arhythm. He must be careful also to describe thepace of his movements in the right terms, and if possibleto verify them by hearing them played before hefixes it finally; for a work, when it comes to beperformed, often demands a different tempo from whatthe composer has imagined in his head, and thisexperience is still more necessary to a beginner, whonot infrequently changes the pace in his mind, unconsciously,as he writes. There is an abundance of termswhereby he can indicate pace without tying it downirretrievably with a metronome mark, but he must beaccurate in his choice of them. Mistakes most frequentlvarise in slow movements, where he will oftenwrite lento when he means andante, or andante whenhe means adagio. The metronome is only of use asindicating the mean average to which the pace shouldconform without being inelastic; and even that averageis liable to change when the exigencies of a largeor small room demand it.The composer is strongly recommended to adhere toItalian as the universal language of music signs. Ithas in recent times become a sort of mock-patrioticfad of his to write directions in the language of hisown country, which would be all very well if his musicwere only performed there; but his patriotism stopsshort of any desire to confine it to his native land.Every player and singer in every country understandsItalian terms. The difficulties which Englishmenexperience when they are faced with such Germanterms as "nicht schleppend," "noch rascher," "innig"