Writing on music

It would never have occurred to me to pursue writing as a secondary career but it had occurred to some of my friends and colleagues, so on their recommendation and encouragement I discovered that I have a reasonable knack for communicating musical concepts to readers. I’ve always been interested in writing for its own sake, as a comfortable creative outlet and as a mental gymnasium. But the idea of writing for larger audience consumption, actually selling stuff, was an idea I hadn’t entertained.

Viewed with the crystal clarity of hindsight, my mindset is puzzling. Voracious reader and book-collector that I am, surely I always knew that written material does not spring out of the ground, on its own, like daisies in the spring. Somebody somewhere scribbled or tapped out those words, letter by letter, word by word, sentence by sentence, making up the paragraphs and pages and chapters and volumes. Yet I remained generally satisfied with consuming written language, rather than releasing any of my own scribbles and taps out into the old, cold world.

But I did it and I do it and I plan to continue doing it indefinitely. For this forthcoming season I’ll be publishing about 18,000 some-odd words in the San Francisco Symphony’s program book Playbill, together with an estimated 10,000 some-odd words more in various other venues. I don’t count the columns for Examiner.com, nor this personal blog–that’s all hobbyist writing as far as I’m concerned, even the Examiner stuff for which I was paid, albeit a mere soupçon of cash. So at around 28,000 purchased-and-published words for the year I’m hardly in any position to make a living as a writer, but 28,000 words aren’t exactly bupkis, either.

My father, upon returning from service in the Pacific during WWII and settling down into married life, entertained thought of a writing career. Somewhere in the family archives can be found a stack of manila envelopes, each containing a short story and a cover letter, each with a matching rejection slip from one of the day’s magazines. Dad’s dreams turned sadly to pipe as his pressing need to support a wife and forthcoming baby demanded an end to his brief—and barren—literary adventure.

Thus my wordsmithery may have arisen honestly, i.e., via nature and not just nurture. On the other hand, it may be the inevitable end-product of a person who lives privately for the most part but spends most of his working time communicating music to others; I have information to impart and the undisturbed domestic time to relay it on paper or onscreen.

I’m not a particularly fast writer, although I can bang out your basic e-mail (or blog posting) with all due dispatch. When it comes to writing for publications—in particular for the SF Symphony and its literate, discerning audience—I take my good sweet time about it all. Typically I start by submersing myself into whatever piece I’m writing about, listening to it almost endlessly, even playing it on the piano and studying the score. After that comes the research end of things, an activity I relish. Invariably I overdo it, squirreling away a vastly larger hoard of scholarly nuts than I could possibly hope to eat, but a bountiful storehouse is preferable to an empty larder any time.

When the time comes to write, I tend to wait for an inspiration to hit regarding the lead—i.e., the article’s opening, my one single chance to attract the reader. A dishwater-flat kickoff such as: “Ludwig van Beethoven was born in 1770 in Bonn, Germany” will never do. One needs to be intriguing, challenging, seductive about it all.

I’ve tried a lot of strategies for good leads; some haven’t worked as well as others. But eventually something pops up.

The end of an article is terribly important. Sometimes a good lead can result in a happy ending, if I can somehow tie the two together. Then comes the middle of the thing—all of the hardcore information that needs to be given out in appropriate doses. Sometimes it’s the easiest to write, but cliché lurks everywhere. I’m heartily sick and tired of “a plaintive flute enters over a gently pulsating accompaniment in the lower strings” or other such stock phrases typical of hack music writing. But I can’t say that I have avoided cheap hacks every time; they are determined little beasties, to be sure, and they will be heard.

Short articles require more discipline than long ones; in a 400-500 word quickie, every word counts, every bit of padding or verbal fat threatens to weaken the delicate structure of the thing. Short articles can support no more than a single-sentence lead and demand the most succinct of closings.

Folks who are enamored of every word they write are unlikely to write well. Erasing is the key to good writing. Nowadays we are blessed with that ubiquitous servant, the Delete key. It must be used with abandon and with nary a second’s hesitation. Another key is revision, the more the merrier. I try to write early then allow the article to ferment for a while; upon returning to it a week or so later, I’m much more inclined to notice problems.

Another trick is to read aloud; good writing sounds well. Words must flow into each other in a pleasing rhythm, avoiding unsavory tonal combinations. Sentences must be varied in length, but not just because writing manuals say so; it helps to avoid tedium. The extremely short sentence (“Jesus wept.”) can pack quite a wallop, used appropriately, just as a complex multi-layered affair of paragraph-ish length may well be an object of beauty just for its own sake. One must listen carefully.

From the above remarks, it is clear enough that writing on music is no different from any other kind of writing; it’s all writing first and foremost. To write expressively about music, one must write expressively, period. Thus it is a universal discipline, a practice to be followed by anybody with a point to make and a yen to convey it.

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