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Music Analysis
Your essays will often involve analysis or description of music. The analyses presented in
student essays are not always as successful as they might be. To be sure, analysis demands
skills for which practice is the only path to improvement; there are no simple rules for
producing successful analyses. The following guidelines, however, should be of help.
Before you analyze, try to have some idea of just what it is you are looking for. There are many
perspectives from which to analyze a piece, not all of which will produce results useful to your
purpose. Hence, you should decide what the general aim of your essay is; then you should let
the analysis you do -- and especially the analysis you present in your essay -- be guided by that
aim.
You may wish to begin your analysis by examining your chosen piece carefully from beginning
to end. It is often unwise, however, merely to present this beginning-to-end analysis in your
essay; such blow-by-blow analyses are usually tedious to read and seem pointless.
A better tactic is as follows. Having completed your beginning-to-end analysis to your own
satisfaction, stand back and survey the results, looking for general relationships, general
patterns and principles. (In fact, some such relationships, patterns, and principles should
become apparent to you even as you conduct your initial analysis.) Make these general points
the focus of your essay's analysis. Present the general points and use selected passages (not,
perhaps, the whole piece) to illustrate these points. Your detailed analysis of the passages will
then seem to have some guiding purpose.
When analyzing vocal music in foreign languages, avoid using text translations that appear in
the score; such translations are always inaccurate in meaning. Instead, obtain independent,
literal translations. Sources of these are usually readily available; again, consult the music
librarian.
One of the principal aims of the essay, however, is to lead you to think and write critically about
music -- difficult skills, but central to your career as an educated musician. You should not,
therefore, shy away from pursuing your own thoughts about the music you are analyzing. Use
your seconday sources to inspire, inform, confirm, or challenge your critical ideas, not to
replace them. It is your essay, and your instructor will expect your voice, your intelligence to
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come through.
Analytical Writing
You should normally use present-tense verbs for analysis, past tenses for historical narrative,
for example:
The first movement opens with two abrupt E-flat major chords. The theme that
follows comprises two motives, both of which outline the tonic triad.
If you use foreign (especially Italian) musical terms, avoid rendering them grammatically
awkward by anglicizing them. The words forte and piano, for instance, are adjectives ("loud,"
"soft"); to turn them into English nouns by writing of "recurring fortes" or "delicate pianos" is
incorrect. The words crescendo and diminuendo are present-participle verb forms ("becoming
louder," "becoming softer"); therefore, you should avoid writing of "dramatic crescendos" or of
music "gradually diminuendoing".
Proper titles of compositions (for example, operas, oratorios, symphonic poems, songs,
motets, madrigals, etc.) are set in italics. Proper titles are usually given in their original
languages, at least for the more "usual" languages (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish,
Latin). Titles in less usual languages should usually be translated into English.
Proper titles of movements from larger compositions are set in quotation marks, as may
be proper titles of small-scale works (especially songs).
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Generic titles are capitalized, but are neither italicized nor set in quotation marks. You should
usually give generic titles of compositions in English. Generic titles of movements, however,
should appear in their original languages. When an opus or catalogue number is used as the
sole identifier of a work, it is not preceded by a comma.
English: the first word, significant words, proper names (Britten's The Turn of the Screw)
German: the first word, all nouns. (Korngold's Die tote Stadt)
French: the first word (and second if the first is an article), proper names
(Beaumarchais's Le Mariage de Figaro)
C C# C-sharp
Sometimes you may need to distinguish exact pitches by their registers. There are a few
current conventions for doing so. The following one, recommended by the International
Acoustical Society, is gaining wide acceptance (with the numbers superscripted or printed at the
baseline).
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The introduction occupies only mm. 1-2. The cellos enter with the principal theme in
m. 3. Measures 155-401 constitute the development section.
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