“Not only should every figure and every expression and action contribute to the general effect, but whatever does not tend to this purpose more or less deteriorates from it.”

Asher Benjamin

“This principle is obvious in all architectural compositions, as well as in those in music …the general style of the composition should ever be throughout in accordance with, and should bear relation to the subject of it, and to the particular characters introduced.

The various figures and parts in a composition should, … moreover be necessary to the place which it fills. If a figure or a metaphor may as well be in one part of the composition as another, it may probably be as well out of it altogether.”

The Music of the Eye  Peter Leigh, 1831