Writing About Music

Writing about music, as someone once wittily observed, is like dancing about architecture. Our language simply isn't equipped to describe music - least of all with any empirical kind of certainty - in the same way it isn't possible to fully describe what a person's face looks like or even something less unique, like a chair. We can resort to the symbolic language of music to convey some meaning, but even this is almost as faulty a means of describing music as is writing about it. For example, take the following two snippets:





Even somebody untrained in reading music will be able to see that both snippets appear to be the same. Somebody trained in reading music should quickly also be able to identify them as being the opening motif of the tune Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. But are the two snippets really as similar as they appear? If you now imagine the first snippet as played on a trumpet and the second played by a violin, similarities would still exist, but only to a point. Aside from the different timbres of the two instruments, interpretation plays a very large part in how music 'symbols' are converted into 'meaning' - arguably moreso than other written languages such as English and mathematics. Interpretation speaks to things such as tempo and dynamics as well as nuances that can't be written, such as the performer's existing knowledge and memory of how this tune is commonly played. In other words, traditional epistemologies of empirical and qualitative research aren't enough to fully describe music.

This post isn't really going anywhere, but that's what's in my head right now.