Critical convictions: can words describe music?
Can anyone convey, with a modicum of objectivity, what a piece of music sounds like, let alone what effect it may have on the listener? The uncomfortable truth, I’m afraid, is that the words, sentences, and paragraphs we depend on in our critical commentary are of dubious objective value. The tools are not well suited to the job. I remember an early conversation I had with our editor concerning a passage of music I liked. I’d simply written that the passage was “beautiful”. But what did it mean? As a fledgling reviewer, my concern was not only to be more specific, but to enliven my prose. The editor’s advice was simple and direct: “Don’t worry.” We went on to agree that common words are usually best, and one can spend too much time looking for esoteric descriptions that end up sounding strained. No apologies are needed to call something beautiful. In recent years, however, many of our reviews have gotten longer and longer in an attempt to convey, with greater precision, how music actua
