[Music illustration]

and in fancy we ride on mighty surges when we listen to the principal
subject of Rubinstein's "Ocean" symphony:

[Music illustration]

In none of these instances can the composer be said to be imitative.
Music cannot copy water, but it can do what water does, and so suggest
water.

[Sidenote: _High and low._]

Some of the most common devices of composers are based on conceptions
that are wholly arbitrary. A musical tone cannot have position in
space such as is indicated by high or low, yet so familiar is the
association of acuteness of pitch with height, and gravity of pitch
with depth, that composers continually delineate high things with
acute tones and low things with grave tones, as witness Handel in one
of the choruses of "The Messiah:"

[Music illustration: Glo-ry to God in the high-est, and peace on
earth.]

[Sidenote: _Ascent, descent, and distance delineated._]

Similarly, too, does Beethoven describe the ascent into heaven and the
descent into hell in the Credo of his mass in D. Beethoven's music,
indeed, is full of tone-painting, and because it exemplifies a double
device I make room for one more illustration. It is from the cantata