Charles Rosen

Writing about Music

1. Choose music you care about, or find something to care about in assigned music. 2. Immerse yourself in the music by listening to it, reading its score, listening while reading the score, and by playing its lines yourself—before attempting to write about it. 3. Determine what seems most remarkable about what you heard. 4. Identify passages of interest and annotate them in your personal copy of the score. 5. Develop your own opinions about the music, describe your own personal discoveries, devise explanations for your them, and draw conclusions you feel are significant. 6. Identify supporting evidence for your beliefs. 7. Learn what others have written about this music. 8. Identify a central problem you believe deserves being address by your writing. 9. Sketch a thesis statement that expresses the problem and conveys your personal attitude. 10. Arrange reasoning that will persuade another musician to agree with you.