More wisely we should consider how much we can avoid
seeing and dispense with.
So it is also in music. Cherubini says the number of things that can
be done in fugue with a very simple subject is endless, but that the
trouble lies in knowing which to choose from all these infinite
possibilities.
As regards painting, any one can paint anything in the minute manner
with a little practice, but it takes an exceedingly able man to paint
so much as an egg broadly and simply. Bearing in mind the shortness
of life and the complexity of affairs, it stands to reason that we
owe most to him who packs our trunks for us, so to speak, most
intelligently, neither omitting what we are likely to want, nor
including what we can dispense with, and who, at the same time,
arranges things so that they will travel most safely and be got at
most conveniently. So we speak of composition and arrangement in all
arts.
Making Notes
My notes always grow longer if I shorten them. I mean the process of
compression makes them more pregnant and they breed new notes. I
never try to lengthen them, so I do not know whether they would grow
shorter if I did. Perhaps that might be a good way of getting them
shorter.
Shortening
A young author is tempted to leave anything he has written through
fear of not having enough to say if he goes cutting out too freely.
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