applicable to instrumental as they were to vocal music. The requirements
of the singer are not those of the player. To a performer on the piano,
who has to light rapidly and simultaneously on a number of tones, or to
a violinist who has to leap through several octaves with great rapidity,
the most urgent need is that of a definite and fixed mark, by which the
absolute pitch of each successive tone may be at once recognised.
Neither of these has any time to think about the melodious relation of
the tones; it is quite as much as they can do to find their place on the
key-board or the string. Rousseau's scheme, or any similar one, fails to
supply the clear and obvious index to pitch supplied by the old system.
Old Rameau pointed this out to Rousseau when the scheme was laid before
him, and Rousseau admitted that the objection was decisive,[330] though
his admission was not practically deterrent.

His device for expressing change of octave by means of points would
render the rapid seizing of a particular tone by the performer still
more difficult, and it is strange that he should have preferred this to
the other plan suggested, of indicating height of octave by visible
place above or below a horizontal line. Again, his attempt to simplify
the many varieties of musical time by reducing them all to the two modes
of double and triple time, though laudable enough, yet implies an
imperfect recognition of the full meaning of time, by omitting all
reference to the distribution of accent and to the average time value of
the tones in a particular movement.

FOOTNOTES:

[318] Quoted in Martin's _Hist. de France_, xvi. 158.

[319] _Conf._, viii. 197. Grimm, _Corr. Lit._, i. 27.