Those on the other hand who hold that a
musician should never knowingly borrow will doubtless say that common
form passages are an obvious and notorious exception to their rule,
and the one the limits of which are easily recognised in practice
however hard it may be to define them neatly on paper.
It is not suggested that when a musician wants to compose an air or
chorus he is to cast about for some little-known similar piece and
lay it under contribution. This is not to spring from the loins of
living ancestors but to batten on dead men's bones. He who takes
thus will ere long lose even what little power to take he may have
ever had. On the other hand there is no enjoyable work in any art
which is not easily recognised as the affiliated outcome of something
that has gone before it. This is more especially true of music,
whose grammar and stock in trade are so much simpler than those of
any other art. He who loves music will know what the best men have
done, and hence will have numberless passages from older writers
floating at all times in his mind, like germs in the air, ready to
hook themselves on to anything of an associated character. Some of
these he will reject at once, as already too strongly wedded to
associations of their own; some are tried and found not so suitable
as was thought; some one, however, will probably soon assert itself
as either suitable, or easily altered so as to become exactly what is
wanted; if, indeed, it is the right passage in the right man's mind,
it will have modified itself unbidden already.
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