Imust have a London audience.I could never preach, but to the educated; to those who were capable of estimating my composition.

-Austen,Jane
  Mansfield Park, ch.34.

Empires and old women are more happy many times in their cures than learned physicians, because they are more exact and religious in holding to the composition and confection of tried medicines.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  The Advancement of Learning, bk.4, ch.2.

   One composition is meagre, though it has many figures; another is rich, though it has few.

-Diderot, Denis
^81 Pense¤  es de¤  tache¤ e s sur la peinture.

Our composition must be more accurate in the beginning and end thaninthemidst, and intheendmore than in the beginning; for through the midst the stream bears us.

-Jonson, Ben
Timber: or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter (published 1640).

Only when the habit of one's consciousness to see in paintings bits of nature, madonnas and shameless nudes has disappeared, shall we see a pure-painting composition.

-Malevich, Kasimir
  Manifesto, quoted in C Gray  The Russian Experiment in  Art (rev edn1986).

It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of jazz, and I, myself, happened to bethe creator intheyear1902† Jazz music isa style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in jazz, if one has the knowledge.

-Morton,Jelly Roll (Ferdinand)
  In Downbeat,  Aug.

All arts are taught by degrees. The first process in art of the painter is the composition of colours. Let your mind be afterwards applied to the study of the mixtures.

-Theophilus   c.10c
An Essay UponVarious Arts (translated by Robert Hendrie,1847), bk.1, preface.