Words & Music – One

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”
Orig. Unknown, Attributed to Elvis Costello, Martin Mull, Laurie Anderson, Steve Martin, Frank Zappa, Charlie Mingus… etc.

It would not be so difficult to dance about architecture, although, if the building is very big, it may take some time to move all the way around it. Dancing, critically, on the theme of architecture, though, may prove more difficult for a spectator to follow, but it could be done. Both forms hinge on rhythm – or a sort of rhythm where solidity and space alternate – and a skilled dancer could convey the dense succession of columns of San Pietro, the spiral steps in Cologne cathedral or the wayward facades of la Sagrada Família. If a problem arises it is perhaps that dance is difficult enough to comprehend when it is only about itself or that, inversely, it would be tricky to construct a static building that has much to say about the Tarantella.

Composing a score about the tribulations of writing may not be that enlightening, but, certainly, Mr. Strauss’ Don Quixote or Ms. Bush’s Wuthering Heights can be heard as a kind of gloss on the respective texts. In comparison, writing about music seems like a walk in the park, although one usually conducted in an office. If one sees the purpose of music as something to be purely experienced, writing is the best medium we have through which experience can be discussed. Though why more reviews are not written as roundelays, I do not know.

When the music in question is popular song, though, a possible problem arises, in that the presence of a lyric puts composer and critic on equal ground. The song and review have words alike in common and, as language, we hope, is our writer’s speciality, it is with the lyric that they attempt to engage on an intellectual level. The music is discussed in purely descriptive terms and the relationship between lyric and music, only tentatively. Meaning is to be taken from the words and from the music, only sensory experience. Some critics may as well write about reading poetry in a Jacuzzi.

If pop writers lack the technical nous to accurately translate how a piece works and, thus ‘how it sounds’ to those who haven’t heard it (that is, their readers), it is hardly a surprise – for they were only readers once too and learned their appreciation of the form from their forebears. With neither the vocabulary nor knowledge between them (or it being unsound or elitist to presume such knowledge) to express the workings of the work, the best of the writers must use their literary chops to convey the experience of hearing it. It is, after all, the experience for which the consumer pays, not the meaning. That, they will supply themselves whenever they litter the song about their lives.

Whether or not it was possible was not the thrust of Mr. Costello’s much-cited use of the phrase (the first I heard of it, but not the first heard). He suffixed the sentence with the less quip-worthy: “It’s a really stupid thing to want to do.” Certainly, enough people dance about music to suggest that the component parts of the equation do not exist in isolation and need not be left alone. Dancing or not dancing to a piece of music is a valid criticism, but, more importantly, it engages with the experience of hearing – its rhythms are the rhythms of the music, so too are its emphases and its stresses; the movements describe, critique and experience the music all at once, just as the music explores the space of the venue, while being controlled by it.

It is on a different hand, though, that we recall Mr. Bangs’ attempt to write a review of the J. Geils’ Band live with the group onstage. That may have been the moment he, allegedly, said that writing about music was like dancing about architecture. He certainly didn’t write it down then, as he couldn’t concentrate over the music.

Most pop criticism, thus, is a feat of memory or imagination. Like Mr. Bangs, the writer must re-write after the event, capturing, not the experience, but the recollection of the experience. The critical reflection that justifies most writing on art engages with the techniques and the messages of the work and, though the reflection may be artful, one must first take a step back. To reflect upon the experience, which is the role of pop criticism, one must step back from the experience itself, not truly engaging with it, but, instead, batting at reminiscence and trapping vagaries and vaguenesses. An engaged critique would probably not extend past “Wow.”

Writing about pop is hardly writing about music at all; it is writing about the structures that surround the music and, should the music be of real merit, it will be talked around, compared to and implied. Really, writing about music is like dancing about space.