MUSICAL COMPOSITION

78 MUSICAL COMPOSITIONmusical equivalent of the rondeau in poetry, with itsthreefold repetition of the main theme. Here he willhave to add a third contrasted subject, and will alsobe able to practise the experience he has derived fromvariation writing by modifying in different ways thethree repetitions of the first subject as they reappear;while the episodes or bridges between the subjects willgive him his first practice in the development offragments of his themes and in the mixing of them.From rondos he may pass to slow movements both insong, rondo and elementary first-movement form, andfrom slow movements to sonata form proper as in thefirst movements of sonatas. When he has masteredthis last and most difficult type, his work, as far as formis concerned, is done; but the mastery is not gainedin one or even two successful attempts. The varietywithin the limits of an apparently shackled formula is80 great, that it takes not months but years to tumform from a master into a servant. If the composerinvestigates the knots of the ropes which bind him, hewill eventually find how to loosen them.Too many students are afraid, from a natural desireto be original, to copy the examples which the greatcomposers provide; but if they wish to get at the rootof the methods in which their predecessors successfullyworked, they must make up their minds to do so.Here, again, the parallel of the art of painting comesin, where students can get the best possible tuitionfrom masters greater than any living by copying theirpictures, and so getting at the root of their methods.A musician has one great advantage over a painter inthis branch of study; for he can take a movement by agreat composer for a model, but confine his imitation