Phrase-addition

The phrase is the structural basis of all musical

composition. By this is meant, not necessarily the single phrase, but

the phrase in its collective sense.



The phrase is, after all, only a unit; and the requirements of Variety

cannot be wholly satisfied by the mere development and extension of a

single phrase, except it be for a certain limited section of the piece,

or for a brief composition in small fo m (like Schumann, op. 68, No. 8).



The act of addition does therefore enter into the processes of

music-writing, as well as extension. Phrase may be added to phrase,

in order to increase the primary material, and to provide for greater

breadth of basis, and a richer fund of resources. The condition to be

respected is, that such aggregation shall not become the ruling trait,

and, by its excess, supplant the main purpose,--that of development.

That is, it must be held rigidly within the domain of Unity. The

student of the classic page will therefore expect to find a more or

less marked family resemblance, so to speak; prevailing throughout the

various phrases that may be associated upon that page.



Each additional phrase should be, and as a rule will be, sufficiently

new in some respect or other to impart renewed energy to the

movement; but--so long as it is to impress the hearer as being the same

movement--there will still remain such points of contact with the

foregoing phrase or phrases as to demonstrate its derivation from them,

its having grown out of them.



This process of addition (not to be confounded with the methods of

extending a single phrase, illustrated in the preceding chapter) is

exhibited first, and most naturally, in the so-called Period-form.