MUSICAL COMPOSITION

182 MUSICAL COMPOSITIONtonic will be robbed of all its freshness if it is heard amoment too soon; the more firmly the tonality has beenfixed in the mind in the first part, the greater is thenecessity of keeping clear of it in the free fantasiasection. Wagner's wholesome advice to say everythingin a key before leaving it has its counterpart, understoodbut not expressed, to avoid the same key whenyou have said everything in it which you want to say.Do not, therefore, discount your arrival at a given keyby anticipating its entry.(§ 14) The danger of making the keys into whichyou modulate sound as if they were the original keyof the piece.This may arise from two causes; either from thetonality being insufficiently driven home at the start,or from the subsidiary key being so firmly insisted onthat it overbalances the original key. For this reasonit is most inadvisable for a beginner to alter his keysignaturein the course of a movement, as, for example,in a movement in E major, when the second subject is inB major, to alter the signature from four sharps to five.The mere sight of the original key-signature tends tokeep the due balance of tonality in the mind, and torelegate every subordinate key to its proper position inthe general scheme. This is one of the reasons whyBrahms laid so much stress on a composer writing hisclefs and key-signatures at the beginning of every pageand every line. It is not waste of time to do so; themere manual labour gives a little pause for thought, ora little rest to the brain; as a perpetual reminder ofthe original tonality it is invaluable. Too definite anapproach to a related key may produce the same uncertaintyof tonality. The modulation must be 80