A Short Guide to Writing about Music

A Short Guide to Writing about Music correlates the skills acquired in music composition, playing, and studying to the skills needed for successful writing-commitment, practice, revision, balance, and control. This writing guide offers clear instruction and a wide range of writing tasks-from reaction papers and concert reviews, to program notes and abstracts, to persuasive essays and research papers. Many student and professional writing samples are included to illustrate these assignments, with accompanying commentary and suggestions for students. Book jacket.

Preface

xiii

Writing About Music

1

(20)

Words About Music: Why?

1

(2)

Choosing an Audience

3

(1)

Kinds of Writing

4

(5)

History and Biography

4

(1)

Style Study

5

(2)

Analysis

7

(1)

Performance Study

8

(1)

Organological, Archival, and Source Studies

8

(1)

Criticism

9

(8)

Marxist Criticism

10

(1)

Soviet Pseudo-Marxist Criticism

11

(1)

Cultural Criticism

12

(1)

Gender Studies in Music

13

(2)

Postcolonial Criticism

15

(2)

The Author's Opinion: Clarity and Restraint

17

(4)

Writing About Music By, and For, Those Who Cannot (Necessarily) Read It

21

(19)

What You Can and Cannot Do

24

(1)

The Concert Review

25

(4)

Reporting on a News Event

25

(1)

Artistic Evaluation

26

(3)

Promoting Community Interest in Music

29

(1)

Popular and World Musics

29

(11)

Crossing the Cultural Divide

35

(5)

Writing Music Analysis

40

(16)

Analysis and Its Uses

40

(3)

Analytical Content vs. Play-by-Play

43

(3)

Analysis Without Musical Examples

45

(1)

Technical Terminology

46

(1)

Two Analytical Excerpts with Commentary

47

(4)

Organizing Analytical Writing

51

(5)

Three Kinds of Practical Writing

56

(16)

Program and Liner Notes

57

(8)

Biographical Background

59

(1)

Cultural Context

59

(1)

Style and Affect

59

(6)

Summaries and Abstracts

65

(3)

The Summary

65

(1)

The Abstract

66

(2)

The Press Release

68

(4)

Belief into Words: Opinion and the Writing of an Effective Essay

72

(20)

Presentation and Tone

73

(4)

Organization

73

(1)

Confrontational Writing

73

(3)

Stylistic Excess

76

(1)

The Writing Process: From Outline to Final Draft

77

(13)

``Benefits of the Suzuki Method,'' by Jessica Mosier

77

(6)

``Skryabin's Mystical Beliefs and the Holographic Model,'' by Jeff Simpson

83

(7)

Hints on Beginning

90

(2)

Research in Music

92

(24)

The Purposes of Research

92

(1)

Choice of Topic

93

(1)

Locating Sources

94

(1)

Kinds of Written Sources

95

(7)

Non-English Sources

95

(1)

Reference Sources

96

(1)

Books

97

(1)

Journal and Magazine Articles

98

(1)

Other Web-Based Sources

99

(1)

Recording Liner Notes

100

(1)

Musical Scores

101

(1)

Use of Sources

102

(7)

Optimizing Research Time

102

(1)

Don't Believe Everything You Read!

103

(1)

Scholarly vs. Textbook Sources

103

(1)

Relative Age of Sources

104

(1)

Authorial Perspective

105

(1)

Dependability of the Source Itself

106

(1)

Special Difficulties in Using Musical Sources

106

(3)

Citing Your Sources

109

(1)

To Quote or to Paraphrase?

110

(1)

Turning Research Into Writing

110

(2)

The Foundations of Your Research

110

(1)

On Being Derivative

111

(1)

Whose Ideas?

112

(4)

Choice of Sources

112

(1)

The Opening Paragraph

112

(1)

Conclusions

113

(3)

A Sample Research Paper in Music

116

(19)

``Gerswin's French Connection,'' by Amie Margoles

116

(17)

Commentary on the Margoles Paper

133

(2)

Style in Writing

135

(26)

The Meaning of ``Style''

135

(4)

Academic Style Traits

139

(6)

Complex Sentence Structure

139

(1)

Obscure Words

139

(1)

First Person Plural

140

(1)

Passive Voice

141

(2)

Traditional Academic Organization

143

(2)

Fashioning Clear Sentences

145

(7)

Taste

147

(1)

Gender-Neutral Wording and the Pronoun Problem

148

(1)

Transitions

149

(2)

Variety

151

(1)

Punctuation

152

(3)

Colon, Semicolon, and Comma

153

(1)

A Note on Hyphens and Centuries

154

(1)

Specifically Musical Uses of Punctuation

155

(1)

Accuracy in Wording

155

(4)

Ill-Advised Upgrades

156

(1)

Beat, Meter, Rhythm

157

(1)

That and Which

158

(1)

Accuracy in Spelling and Punctuation

158

(1)

Aggregate Titles

158

(1)

Awkward Wording

159

(1)

Toward a Personal Style

159

(2)

The Final Manuscript

161

(28)

General Format

161

(3)

Binding, Paper, Duplication

161

(1)

Word Processing

161

(1)

Copies

162

(1)

Title Page

163

(1)

Spacing and Margins

163

(1)

Block Quotations

163

(1)

Bibliography

164

(1)

Abbreviations

164

(1)

Latin Abbreviations and Terminology

164

(1)

Musical Abbreviations

165

(1)

Titles of Musical Works

165

(1)

Musical Examples and Captions

166

(3)

Production of Examples

167

(1)

Captions

168

(1)

The Citation Process

169

(4)

Footnotes or Endnotes?

170

(1)

Parenthetical Citation Format

171

(1)

Incomplete Citations

172

(1)

Abbreviated Citation Form

173

(1)

Sample Citations

173

(14)

Explanatory Footnotes

186

(1)

Musical Scores

186

(1)

Last-Minute Corrections

187

(2)

Index

189

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A Short Guide to Writing about Music

Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials