Page:How to Write Music.djvu/44

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HOW TO WRITE MUSIC

because leger-lines are cramped together in one case and too wide apart in another (see Fig. 23).


"Two things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other," as Euclid says: let leger-lines be equidistant with stave-lines, and they will be level with each other.

But accuracy in the number of lines is of more importance than the appeal to the eye, and the appeal to the eye must of course not be made a substitute for it. The context shows the high note in Fig. 24 (which is several times repeated) to have been intended for E, the position of which, on the paper, it about occupies. But, being on the first leger-line, it is A, and would be were it a yard above the stave! (The example is taken from a printed, not a manuscript copy! The first two notes are evidently intended as grace-notes, though the stems are turned down; the stems in the second half of the first measure should have been turned up.)