MUSICAL COMPOSITION

DANGER SIGNALS 173instruments to encourage his successors to throw themall into a cauldron and boil them up together. If hisinvention and melodic power had been equal to hispoetical command over the orchestra; if, in a word,he had been as great a draughtsman as he was acolourist, his influence would have been paramountat the present day. The combined characteristics ofWagner and Berlioz, the collectiveness of the one andthe individualism of the other, if the value of theirmusic had been on an equality, would have keptthe orchestral road clear. These luxurious outburstsare too often used to conceal poverty of invention."The greater the number of staves in the score, thefewer the number of ideas," was an astute commenton the situation by a great conductor. The bestantidote to this plethora of material is a solid groundingin writing for a small orchestra, such as sufficed forMozart, and, in the main, for Beethoven. A composerwho can produce such colour as Wagner did in hisSiegfried Idyll, with the same limited means, will findit far easier to dispose larger forces when he is calledupon to command them, and his experience in controllingsmaller bodies will lead gradually up to agreater ability in handling army corps. He willknow his units and their capabilities, individual aswell as collective, and will not strain them beyondtheir powers. He will, for example, treat his hornplayersas human beings, not as padding to fill upchords, and he will never lose sight of the two mostvaluable assets of an orchestrator, contrast of colourand economy of material.(§ 6) The danger of lack of economy in material.The student must remember that the more