Composition

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composition, in art, the organization of forms and colors within the work of art. In traditional sculpture this means the arrangement of masses and planes. In representational painting it means the grouping of forms on a two-dimensional plane in depth. In abstract painting forms are generally composed on planes parallel to the picture surface. In illusionistic works (see illusionism) with advanced perspective, forms are arranged to accord with the laws of depth perception.

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Composition

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composition, in ancient and medieval law, a sum of money paid by a guilty party as satisfaction to the family of the person who was injured or killed. Failure to make the payment might justify retaliation in kind against the offender or his family. In earliest times, the payment was made as a result of a mutual agreement between the parties, but later it was imposed by law. In many societies the amount paid varied according to the rank of the person injured or slain. Composition reflected a transition from a system of feuds or blood revenge (see vendetta) to one where socially dangerous acts are primarily a concern of the state rather than of private persons and their families alone. The exaction of the payment recognized the outrage to the person and the family as the prime offense, but it tended to discourage disorder by providing a substitute for retributive killing or other violence. When, in addition to composition, a fine had to be paid to the state, the dangerous act approached the modern conception of a crime (see criminal law). This institution was known in all Germanic cultures, including Anglo-Saxon England, and was widespread in many parts of the world. It is still practiced in certain Middle Eastern countries. An example of composition is wergild [Old Eng.,=man's price], the payment made by a murderer to the family of a murdered person. Wergild was often paid to the king for loss of a subject and to the lord of the manor for the loss of a vassal as well as to the family of the deceased. The term composition is also used to refer to an agreement between an insolvent debtor and his creditor, whereby the creditor for some consideration, such as an immediate payment of a portion of the debt, waives the remainder and considers his claim satisfied.

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Composition

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Composition can refer to:

• Composition (logical fallacy), a fallacy of ambiguation in which one assumes that a whole has a property solely because its various parts have that property
• Composition (visual arts), the plan, placement or arrangement of the elements of art in a work
• Composition (language), in literature, oratory, and rhetoric, producing a work of spoken tradition or written literature
• Composition (number theory), a way of writing a positive integer as a sum of positive integers
• in computer science
• Object composition, combining simpler data types into more complex data types, or function calls into calling functions
• Function composition (computer science), an act or mechanism to combine simple functions to build more complicated ones
• in mathematics
• Function composition, an operation that takes functions and gives a single function as the result
• Relation composition, an operation that takes relations and gives a single relation as the result
• A law of composition, usually called a binary function
• Musical composition, an original piece of music
• Composition studies, the professional field of writing instruction
• MIDI composition

See also

• Early Germanic law, concerning the use of the term composition, or making a payment instead of receiving a punishment. With reference to the modern period, see Ausgleich, also called the Composition of 1867.
• Compose key, a key on a computer keyboard

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