Musical Thinking and Musical Writing

Reflections on "Writing about Music"

At the end of a semester, despite or because of the flurry of grading, late assignments, and paperwork, it is inevitable to get reflective. Right now, the experience of this ritual is complicated by another class, a short (3-week) flurry of listening and writing that I just call “Writing About Music,” during the first summer term.

The class is intended for non-musicians and is listed as a section of “Introduction to English Studies,” so the parameters are different than when I teach writing to writers or music to musicians. Finding terminology and interpretive language that avoids jargon or technicalities can be difficult, but it is an enlightening approach to the foundational concepts of the English discipline. Music is a text like any other, but it is sometimes deemed inaccessible as an artifact for analysis to the non-expert.

At the same time, I am assessing my Spring-term first-year writing course and the challenges of the semester. Thinking about music through a different medium has been helping me identify areas of rigidity or habit that have crept into my first-year writing delivery. I often tell clients that even academic writing can and should be active and fun, both to read and to write. My insistence on this claim is likely informed and strengthened by my own entry into writing, which was via music.

I need to apply some of my own advice. I need to develop new writing assignments that broaden the scope of analysis and embrace the musicality of language. Writing has rhythm, but it also has timbre, texture, and even melodic contour. Expressing those ideas can lead to some vagueness and often requires symbolic language that is not always appropriate in academic writing. But sometimes it is appropriate. I think my first-year curriculum has stiffened over the years and I’m compelled to free it up a little, so I am grateful for this 3-week reminder that language is music.