Whoever plays the first tune loses.—I recently attended a music festival in our town. There were performances on various stages. The concerts kept overlapping, and the fear of missing out was not just a saying (during a toilet break on the ground floor, you could hear the pulsating sounds from the attic; the desire to experience everything at once was one of the dominant feelings that evening). During the changeovers on the main stage in the tram depot, the large black curtain was drawn. Minutes before the next performance, you could hear the sound check of the band that was about to play. They played a beautiful melody. Simple harmonies, catchy beats, peppered with strange noises. The sound was from a time yet to come. Not from a distant future, but as if the musicians were a few minutes ahead of their time. Then it was quiet and the curtain went up.

Seduced by this teaser, I listened spellbound. The drummer caressed his many cymbals, drummed softly on the toms, a delicate touch on the snare. He was the centre of attention, giving directions to the other musicians through gestures and facial expressions. One after the other, they played their wind instruments, the cello, the keys. Chords were played, harmonies were hinted at. But no one dared, it seemed, to play a proper melody. No one fell into continuous playing. The head teacher intervened with a loud swipe across the snare, a hard beat on the bass drum. With their eyes downcast, they obediently followed along. When two or three consecutive chords were played and a harmony was in reach, you knew that the next notes would surely shatter everything again. Since the Well-Tempered Clavier, harmony has been developed and perfected, as it were. Only you seem to have missed that!, thundered the crash cymbal.

Manifestations of symmetry, harmony of thoughts and feelings, the interplay of sounds in space, balanced colour temperatures in paintings, the gentle slope of the gradation curve and the first clouds of breath when stepping out into the cold September morning: we are manifestations striving for harmony. It comes as no surprise that questioners, which creative people are, are not on friendly terms with harmony. Harmony, this overarching phenomenon comprising balance, rhythm, composition, contrast, symmetry and proportion, ultimately also has very mundane and pragmatic aspects, namely in its function as an aesthetic compromise. The latter is often treated in the arts as half-baked, ineffective, even inferior. Yet it is precisely here that the strongest possible tension often lies. In typography, we are familiar with these modalities of harmony. They are not a stylistic finish, but rather the finely drawn line between expression and function (legibility). In the compromise of this harmony, all participants are at their respective extremes. To the very end.