The Music Life and How to Succeed in It

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1891. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... PART IV.-SOME SPECIAL THEMES. CHAPTER XIV. STYLE IN COMPOSITION. If a man has anything to say he will manage to say it; if he has nothing to communicate there is no reason why he should have a good style.--George Macdonald. Probably the finest passages have been written without a consciousness that they were fine.--Auerey De Vere. No one strives so much to gain a style in writing as the man of few ideas. Writers who are fertile in richness of, thought and depth of meaning impress us, first of all, with what they say; it is only after the meaning has worked upon us that we think of their manner of expressing it. There is only one short definition of this much used word, and that one, of Buffon, which you all have heard many times and which you are now to hear again--Le style e'est l'homme. That sentence contains enough to stand alone for this talk, and it should do so if I thought you would patiently study out all it means; but as, in all probability, you would stop before you had fairly begun, we shall go on and talk about it. Try to find how much a question of personality is style, how it comes not by the seeking but by the broadening of thought in the one who has it. An English writer, Joseph Hatton, has said, "The chief secret of Macaulay's style lies in setting forth in every sentence either a fact or an idea." Now, any form of composition that lacks facts or ideas lacks the very qualities for which the art of composition exists. All forms of expression, whether in language or in art, must carry a thought; this thought gives value to the work; a valuable thought rudely expressed has yet all its value, but a beautiful expression of nothing is too evanescent even to give pleasure for more than the passing moment. The foundation of all forms of composition is:-...