r its material, is a pattern-weaving in tones. The
power of music to satisfy and delight resides in the sensuous value
of its material and in the character of its pattern as form, the balance
and contrast of tonal relations, the folding and unfolding of themes,
their development and progress to the final compelling unity-in-variety
which constitutes its form and which in its own inherent and
self-sufficing way is made the expression of the composer's emotion
and musical idea. Lyric poetry is the fitting of rhythmic, melodious,
colored words to the emotion within, to the point where the very
form itself becomes the meaning, and the essence and mystery of the
song are in the singing. Beauty is harmony materialized; it is
emotion ordered and made visible, audible, tangible. If in the arts of
form we seek further a standard of truth, their truth is not found in
their relation to any external verity, but is determined by their
correspondence with inner experience.

In the category of the arts of form the single work is to be received
in its entirety and integrity as form. The whole, however, may be
resolved into its parts, and the individual details may be interesting
in themselves. Thus into decorative patterns are introduced elements
of meaning which attach themselves to the world and experience
external to the artist. Many ornamental motives, like the zigzag and
the egg-and-dart, for example, had originally a symbolic value.
Sometimes they are drawn from primitive structures and fabrics, as
the checker-board pattern, with its likeness to the plaitings of rush
mattings, and the volute and spiral ornaments, which recall the
curves and involutions of wattle and wicker work. Again, decoration
may employ in its service details that in themselves are genuinely
representative art. The frieze of the Parthenon shows in relief a
procession of men and women and horses and chariots and animals.
The sculptures of Gothic churches represent men and women, and
the carvings of mouldings, capitals, and traceries are based on
naturalistic motives, taking their designs from leaves and flowers.
The essential function of ornament is to emphasize form and not to
obscure it, though nowadays in machine-made things a kind of
pseudo-embellishment is laid on to distract attention from the
badness and meaninglessness of the form; in true decoration the
representative elements are subordinated to the formal character of
the whole. The representative