Download Making an Argument about Music

Making an Argument about Music
Often, you will be asked to make an argument about a particular piece of music. In its
most basic form, this is a statement about the piece with evidence that persuades your
reader to agree with your argument. Clearly presenting your overall argument will help
you organize your information around that main point.
For example, if you are writing about the historical importance of Beethoven’s Ninth
Symphony, you might develop an argument like this:
“Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, completed and first performed in 1824, is
historically significant because of the ways that it challenged and expanded
audiences’ expectations of symphonic structure.”
If this is your argument, then you should research what the audience expectations for a
symphony might have been in 1824 based on other pieces of the time. How many
movements did symphonies typically have? What were their formal structures? What
were the performing forces? Once you understand the expectations of the day, you can
identify the specific ways that Beethoven’s Ninth is different as well as what specific
moments of the work (the entrance of the choir, the grand recapitulation which begins the
last movement, etc.) you can cite as evidence for your argument. As you can see, making
an argument in music involves historical or cultural evidence AND specific observations
about the piece itself which combine to give a richly textured picture of the music and the
composer, as well as the context from which they both emerged.
Even when making evaluative or interpretive claims about music, you should always
provide evidence to support your claims. Music often evokes strong emotions in listeners,
but these may not be the same for everyone. Music that you experience as “powerful” or
“triumphant” may be experienced by another listener as “angry” or “violent.” Giving
specific examples from the music will help explain your emotional reactions and give
your reader a context for understanding them. For example, instead of saying
The chorus of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” sounds angrier than the verses.
you might argue that
The added distortion in the guitar, increase in volume, and additional strain on Kurt
Cobain’s voice give the chorus of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” an angrier or more
critical tone than the verses.
Song analysis.
How do the music and text (a song’s lyrics, an opera’s libretto) work together? You
should aim to make an argument about the song in question, using both text and music to
support your claims.
Adapted from University of North Carolina writing center: http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/music/
Strategies. Look at how the text is set to music. This often requires you to first examine
the text. Is it in a regular poetic form on its own? Does it have some type of pattern or
other play with words? What is the meaning of the text?
Now look at the text and listen to the music with it. Does the composer set it in an
unusual way for the genre? Does the music seem to fit with the general meaning of the
text, or does it seem to be at odds with it? Does the composer bring out certain words or
lines of text? Why?
For example, you might say, “In the chorus of ‘Poses,’ Rufus Wainwright sets his first
line of text to a long, arching melody, reminiscent of opera.” This describes the music
and lets the reader know what part you are talking about and how you are hearing it (it
reminds you of opera). Now tell the reader what is significant about this. What does it do
for the meaning of the text? “The text suggests that ‘you said watch my head about it,’
but this rising operatic melody seems to suggest that the singer is really floating away and
gone into another world.” Now your description of the music functions as evidence in an
argument about how the song has two layers of meaning (text and music).
If you can do more theoretical music analysis, this might be a good opportunity to look at
how the harmonies and phrase structures do or do not line up with the text. “Schubert sets
the regular metrical pattern of the text to even four-bar phrases until he gets to the line
‘Ich will den Boden kuessen’ (I want to kiss the ground), whereupon it changes
dramatically from there.” Once again, go further by explaining how this observation
helps us understand the meaning of the text. “This technique extends the time spent on
these lines and makes it seem like the singer is so frantically trying to reach green earth
(through the snow), that he can’t maintain a steady pattern. He is overcome by desperate
emotion when he thinks of seeing the ground again.” Now you have elucidated a moment
in the music that casual listeners might have missed, and you have told them how,
and why, it heightens the meaning of the text.
Adapted from University of North Carolina writing center: http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/music/