RESEARCH AND WRITING IN MUSIC HISTORY

General Principles for Writing about Music

One of the most important aspects of studying the history of music is to learn to
form and to express your own ideas about the music you hear. Discovering and
sharing musical experiences are no less genuinely musical activities than
composing or playing music. Your reading about music should be only a step toward
talking and writing intelligently and effectively about it.
To write effectively about music is inevitably difficult, since by its nature
music expresses its ideas nonverbally. As Felix Mendelssohn once pointed out, the
difficulty in all writing about music is that the music itself is always perfectly precise
and definite, whereas words are imprecise and ambiguous. Nevertheless, we need
to communicate about music and our experiences in hearing, playing, and studying
it. When we succeed in sharing our thoughts about music, we enrich each others
musical lives.
It should be a pleasure to hear and study music and to exchange ideas about
it. Whenever possible, write about music that matters to you. You might select
music for an instrument that you play or for setting poems that you love. When you
do not have the freedom of choice, however, enjoy the opportunity to make the
acquaintance of unfamiliar music. Study to understand new pieces and composers;
understanding is the first step toward liking a new work. Your interest in your
subject will help to make your writing interesting. If your reader discovers that you
are not interested in the music, he or she will soon lose interest also.
There are many types of writing about music, each with particular
requirements of content and style. A simple essay might begin by establishing the
historical and biographical context in which a musical work was composed and then
proceed to an analysis of the music. A more challenging project would be to
compare the histories and stylistic characteristics of two or three pieces. Program
notes require a special approach from the musically knowledgeable writer, since the
description of the music in program notes must take into account that the audience
may not have specialized or technical vocabulary. A performance review or critical
essay allows the expression of personal judgments but also demands especially
clear and well-argued reasoning. Finally, a research paper calls for thorough
documentation, careful construction, and a highly precise style.
It generally works best to approach writing about music in an inductive
way, first establishing facts and then using them as the basis for conclusions and
judgments. In other words, start by asking and answering the what, when, where,
and who questions about the music, then go on to the how and why. Do not
neglect these latter questions; they are harder, but they are the ones that produce
interesting and significant results.

Research Sources

When you begin to write about music, you will want to make yourself familiar with
some basic research sources and tools. The standard encyclopedic reference source
on music in English is The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition
(London: Macmillan, 2001). This monumental work has spawned a variety of smaller
dictionaries and books on particular topics that update the main twenty-nine-
volume set. It is also available online. Among the best one-volume references are
Bakers Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, edited by Nicolas Slonimsky (8th ed.,
New York: Schirmer, 1992), for information about performers and composers, and
The Harvard Dictionary of Music, 4th edition, edited by Don Michael Randel
(Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993), for
discussions of other topics.
It is important to go beyond such basic reference books, of course. The
articles in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians generally provide
substantial bibliographies that will give you a good start. General and specialized
reference sources are listed in Vincent H. Duckles, Ida Reed, and Michael A. Keller,
Music Reference and Research Materials, 5th edition (New York: Schirmer, 1997).
For further material, with brief summaries of the contents of each item, you should
consult the series RILM Abstracts (Rpertoire internationale de la literature
musicale), which is available online. Periodical articles about music are also indexed
in The Music Index and Music Article Guide.
Several very extensive series of studies of music history by periods provide
more detailed coverage than can be incorporated in any single-volume history.
Largest of these is the New Oxford History of Music, published by Oxford University
Press. W.W. Norton and Company pioneered in producing a set of classic volumes,
The Norton History of Music Series, devoted to the main periods of Western music
history, and has now released a second series, The Norton Introduction to Music
History, in a more up-to-date format. A set of more concise volumes has been
published by Prentice-Hall as the Prentice-Hall History of Music Series. A recent and
magisterial survey, although with distinct points of view, is Richard Taruskin, The
Oxford History of Western Music (6 volumes; New York: Oxford University Press,
2005).
You will also want to use the very best editions of musical scores you can find.
The compositions of almost all the leading composers in the Western tradition have
been published in complete critical editions that can be relied on for accuracy. A
number of major composers complete works are currently appearing in new
scholarly editions based on the most authoritative original sources and
sophisticated methods of research. Less prolific composers whose output may not
warrant individual editions are often represented in collected editions. A useful
index to all these editions is Anna Harriet Heyer, Historical Sets, Collected Editions,
and Monuments of Music: A Guide to Their Contents (Chicago: American Library
Association, 1980).
Finally, a word of warning: Avoid such materials as program notes and
recording notes or Internet websites as sources for information or critical judgments.
There are exceptions to this rule, for example, when a composer has provided
comments on the music especially for a certain performance or recording. But
program and recording notes are notoriously unreliable. They may be written by
authors who do not have the time or background to base their writing on thorough
research and musical analysis. Their purpose also makes it unlikely that they offer
balanced and objective information and evaluation. Because Internet sites have no
provision for review by experts, as most book publishers have, anyone can post
information, regardless of her or his qualifications or the quality of the material. If
you do discover interesting facts or ideas in these materials, be sure to verify them
in more reliable sources.

Writing about Music, Culture, and the Other Arts

As this book stresses, music cannot be understood separately from the context of
history and the development of philosophical and aesthetic thought. In writing
about music, you should try to keep in mind how music and the lives and thoughts
of musicians reflect the times and places from which they come and how they in
turn affect their contemporaries and successors.
When you relate music to works in other fields, be careful to think about them
in more substantial terms than superficial details. Consider the aesthetic
foundations of the works what ideas they seek to express and how they seek to
express them. Pay attention not only to the use of similar subject matter of works in
different art forms but also to similarities in the methods and forms of their
construction.
Be sure when you compare music to the visual arts or literature that you
draw reasonable relationships. Choose as examples works that have enough in
common to make comparison sensible. Examples must come from the same time
and place, share subject matter, have the same relative scope, serve similar
functions, or in some other way justify comparison. Otherwise any connections
between them will seem accidental, and their differences will be meaningless.

Writing about Composers Lives

Music always arises out of the experiences of real live people. The biographies of
composers can help us to understand much about how and why they produced their
music. You should discover as much as you can about the events and ideas that
provide the backgrounds for composers works and the circumstances and purposes
that surrounded the creation of the music.
Although practically anything in composers lives might turn out to have
affected their music, it is not true that everything affected every work. When writing
about music, therefore, you need not include every detail of the composers life.
Concentrate on the facts that surrounded the composition of the specific work or
works you wish to discuss. In addition, state explicitly what the connections
between the composers life and music are.
In writing about the works of artists, it is easy to succumb to the
biographical fallacy and interpret the works as mirroring the lives of their creators.
Artists, poets, and composers express their ideas and reflect their experiences in
their works, but they do not present their biographies as directly as writers
sometimes seem inclined to think they do. (Even when artists treat autobiographical
subjects, they are most likely to do so in ways that reflect considerable imagination,
if not downright deception.) Be careful therefore not to interpret music pieces as
expressing the details of composers lives.
On the other hand, our most important understanding of a composer as a
person must come from his or her music. The nature of an artists life is such that
day-to-day or personal matters hold a relatively insignificant position in comparison
to the art itself. Insipid musical ideas and undisciplined musical forms cannot be
redeemed by the observation that the composer was kind, generous, or in any other
way admirable as a person. By the same token profound musical insights and
masterful handling of musical materials can overshadow a composers objectionable
character traits or disagreeable personal behavior. To the extent that we care that a
composer is a musician, that composers music is the most important evidence of
his or her biography.
Descriptive and Analytical Writing

Music itself should always be at the heart of your writing, but you will probably
discover that to write successfully about music itself is difficult. One of the most
frustrating types of writing to read is the essay about music that merely consists of
a guided tour through the score or a blow-by-blow account of a performance. We
soon give up reading such descriptions in frustration. If we want to know how the
music goes, we would prefer to go directly to a performance, a recording, or a score.
Of course, there is much to be said for effective descriptions of particular things that
take place in a piece of music. When you write about music, be as simple, direct,
and precise as possible. You must master a certain vocabulary of musical terms and
learn to use them properly. However, avoid using technical jargon when ordinary
language will do.
Be sure you choose analytical methods appropriate to the music you discuss.
According to a long tradition, curricula for music theory and analysis concentrate on
the study of triadic, functional harmony. This theoretical approach is not generally
appropriate for music other than that of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
however. Nevertheless, you should not shy away from analyzing and writing about
earlier and later music. For the earlier periods in the Western musical tradition a
basic understanding of the church modes and the principles of intervallic
consonance and dissonance provide the foundations for harmonic analysis.
Discussing the most complicated analytical problems of early music, those of
fourteenth-century rhythm, requires in addition a bit of skill in arithmetic. The
analysis of some twentieth- and twenty-first-century music, especially pieces in free
atonal and serial styles, can be quite challenging and profits from some special
techniques, also. Remember that in most cases composers have developed their
musical styles without waiting for theorists to design analytical techniques to
explain it. Writers about music are still working out the necessary methods to deal
with recent styles.
A useful book on analysis is Jan LaRue, Guidelines for Style Analysis, 2nd
edition (Warren, Mich.: Harmonie Park Press, 1992). It provides a systematic
approach to the various components of musical style (sound, harmony, melody,
rhythm, growth) and has established some standard symbols for identifying
elements of a piece of music and methods for diagramming musical structures.
Writing musical analysis must then go beyond description and beyond
naming the various events in a work. Identifying harmonies, devices of
counterpoint, and standard musical forms is only the beginning. Analysis should
undertake to answer the more challenging questions of how musical elements
interact to make an effective work, the functions of harmonic progressions for which
we have no conventional identifiers, why the form of a piece or movement departs
from standard procedures. These questions and others like them are difficult to
answer, but they hold the readers interest because they probe the musical
character of the individual work.
Analysis should eventually lead to broader and deeper insights about a work.
Its direct purpose is to show how the different elements of style work together in the
music. Its ultimate goal, like that of every aspect of writing about music, should be
the understanding of the ideas a musical work expresses.

Writing Style
Because music is an art, writing about it presents special problems of literary style.
The material about which we are writing has sensuous and subjective qualities that
we cannot easily translate into language. We cannot do justice to the music if we try
to avoid those qualities, but neither can we allow them to carry us away.
The sensuous nature of musical material requires vivid and specific
descriptions. Try to write about the things that take place in a piece of music with
the most explicit nouns and active verbs you can find. Do not avoid adjectives and
adverbs either. We cannot increase the value of our discourse about music by
adopting a tone of artificial objectivity and neutrality. To describe a melody as
conjunct may be accurate, but the description is so empty that it does not
distinguish between the fluid smoothness of a Renaissance vocal motet line and the
energetic wiggling of a Baroque instrumental part. To say that a certain melody is
directed upward hardly captures the nature of a particular musical experience if
what the listener hears is a brilliant trumpet arpeggio that rockets abruptly out of
the orchestral texture.
On the other hand, we need to resist any urge to indulge in flamboyant
imagery or fanciful metaphors in our writing. The romanticism of a few generations
ago produced many amusing examples of this sort of purple prose. A violin line
may wiggle, but it is not like a worm; the tone of a trumpet is often brilliant, but it
does not call the orchestra to arms.
Another principle to remember is to write about the music directly. Focus on
the musics history, purposes, character, and construction. Let those factors support
any opinions you may want to present. In the context of well-presented evidence a
critical judgment should not be mistaken for a statement of fact. When you come to
express your impressions and judgments, you can generally do so without prefacing
each statement with the words I think (or something deadly, such as In the
present writers opinion). To begin with I think also has the disadvantage of
turning the sentence into a statement about the writer rather than about the music.
Your reader is likely to be more interested in reading about music than about you
and will learn more about you from what you think about music than from what you
say about yourself, anyway.
In expressing your judgments and particularly in writing conclusions make
sure that general statements really follow from the facts that you have already
presented about the music. An unfortunately frequent type of conclusion in student
papers observes, for example, that Beethoven was one of the greatest composers
who ever lived, that everyone should know his music, and that his works will
continue to be played and appreciated as long as civilization lasts. All this may be
true, but it is unlikely that any particular essay has demonstrated it. When in doubt
about the ending of your essay, consider whether perhaps a simple summary
conclusion will make a good ending or whether it might be best simply to stop.

Some Practical Considerations

When you begin any kind of writing, consider your subject and your reader. Be sure
that the subject is appropriate to your interests and abilities, the medium in which
you are writing, and your reader. Keep in mind the readers reason for reading your
work, his or her technical knowledge, and how much background information he or
she will already have. Decide what the most important points are that you wish the
reader to understand and how to organize and present them in convincing fashion.
Think about how much background and explanation you need to supply.
 When you have collected your information, analyzed the music, and decided
on a general approach, make an outline. The purpose of the outline is to allow you
to organize your information and thoughts without having to concern yourself with
the problems of creating elegant prose. Do not hesitate to try more than one
outline, if you can envision more than one way to arrange your material, then
choose the best of your options. In outlining, try to make sure that each outline
entry has real content; a good way to do this is to make a sentence outline, in which
each entry is a complete sentence with its own subject and verb. Check your outline
to make sure that it allows for everything you want to say; if it does not, you may
find that when you try later to include additional items, the flow of the writing
become difficult to follow.
Perhaps the most difficult stage for most writers is the time when they sit
facing a blank sheet of paper (or video display screen) and have to begin. The best
solution is simply to begin, without concern for polish, and to get your thoughts on
paper (or on your hard drive or disk). You need not start at the beginning of the
introduction and work through to the end of the conclusion. It often works better to
begin with the straightforward statements of fact or some other stylistically simple
portion of the essay. It is much easier to correct and polish rough writing than to
create a literary masterpiece in your head before starting to write at all. Even if you
discard entire paragraphs, you have wasted no more time than if you had just been
staring at a blank page.
Do not forget to give credit for any quoted words, facts, or ideas you have
taken from others. Plagiarism includes not only failing to identify quotations but also
neglecting to acknowledge and cite sources for information and ideas. In different
types of writing credit is given in different ways. Less formal writing, such as
program notes or reviews, generally allows for acknowledgment within the course of
the prosereaders of performance notes or the daily newspaper do not expect
footnotes. More formal papers, such as research papers, require detailed citations,
either as footnotes or in the more recent style with parenthetical references in the
text.
Once you have completed your draft, reread and critique it carefully and
objectively. You might want to check the following, making several passes through
the draft, if necessary:

Introduction. Does the essay begin in such a way that it catches the readers
interest? Is your subject or main point clearly stated? Can the reader get a
good sense of the approach that you have taken?
Statements of fact. Are all the statements of fact true? Are they well
supported by documentation or analysis? Are they clearly and objectively
stated? Is each one necessary? Are they presented in the best order?
Paragraph organization. Does each paragraph have a single topic? Is the
topic clearly presented to the reader in a topic sentence (usually the first
sentence of the paragraph)? Do the paragraphs lead logically from one to the
next?
Opinions and conclusions. Are your opinions logically and clearly based on
the facts as you have presented them? Are your judgments and conclusions
objective and fair?
General style. Have you kept the music in the forefront of the readers
attention? Have you achieved the tone you intended? Have you used the best
words to say what you meant? Are too many sentences short and choppy or
 long and complicated? Have you double-checked for grammatical errors
arising from the revision process and for typographical errors? Have you read
the essay aloud, listening to hear whether it sounds natural and pleasant?

A thorough writers guide specifically directed toward musical writing is

Demar Irvine, Irvines Writing about Music, 3rd ed., revised and enlarged by Mark A.
Radice (Portland, Ore.: Amadeus, 1999). This book offers helpful suggestions about
the step-by-step mechanical procedures of writing a paper, general rules of
grammar and principles of style, and comments on different types of writing. Its
models for footnote references and bibliographic form are unfortunately now
outdated and should not be used. A more concise book of the same type, illustrating
more up-to-date references and bibliographic form, is Joanthan Bellmman, A Short
Guide to Writing About Music (New York: Longman, 2000). A small handbook giving
up-to-date formats as well as other technical recommendations is D. Kern Holoman,
Writing About Music (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988).
For most of us writing is not primarily an art but a craft. Like any other craft it
is not automatic; it requires attention to technical details, trial and criticism, and
much practice. It is worth the time, effort, and thought needed to do it well. Also like
any other craft it grows more satisfying as we work harder at it. Experiment with
different approaches and styles in writing about music and develop your enjoyment
of this aspect of musical experience.