MUSICAL COMPOSITION

134 MUSICAL COMPOSITION, ,(The accent of tI prime decree" is obtained byposition on the strong beat, and length of note.)(high ===-I I I I"Sun, moon and stars are dark to me."'It t;.; ~ ~; I~J. ! J==$$DSun, moon and stars are dark to me.Any composer, who studies and follows the principlesof settings such as this, will not lay himself opento the criticism of poets or to the complaint onceexpressed by Lord Tennyson to the writer that tI somany composers made the notes go up when he wantedthem to go down, and go down when he wanted them togo up"; and he instanced, with something approachingindignation, Balfe's setting of tI Come into the garden,Maud," which, instead of giving the rise,!'Come into the g~den. Maud,'~gave a fall,, =====--~'Come into the garden, Maud,':and utterly destroyed his line and the accentuationof it.Another vital consideration which must be rigidlyremembered in song writing is that the world of singersis divided into sopranos, mezzo-sopranos, contraltos,tenors, baritones and basses, and the vocal part mustbe written for the compass of anyone of these, but notfor an admixture of any two of them, a very commonfault of the inexperienGed beginner. Moreover, eachof these voices has a certain range of notes, equidistantfrom the extremes of its compass, within which