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.
In selecting a score from which to analyze, try to obtain a good edition, usually an Urtext score (that is, one without editorial additions). If you are in doubt about an edition's quality, consult your course instructor or the music librarian.
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.
It is not expected that in an undergraduate essay you will make great and original analytical discoveries about a piece of music. Too many students assume, however, that their own ideas about music are of no value whatever. They rely wholly upon secondary sources for their analyses, merely regurgitating what they've read (sometimes without fully understanding it).
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 come through.
You should normally use present-tense verbs for analysis, past tenses for historical narrative, for example:
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".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.
Although Beethoven erased the symphony's dedication to Napoleon, his admiration for Bonaparte seems not to have vanished completely.
When writing titles of musical compositions, you should use the following conventions. They do not cover all circumstances, but will do for most. (For a more detailed guide, see Holoman 1988, 1-3.)
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.
Mozart's Don Giovanni Schubert's Kennst du das Land Richard Strauss's Don Juan Palestrina's Veni sponsa Christi Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle
(not Bartók's A Kékszakállú herceg vára)
Proper titles of movements from larger compositions are set in quotation marks, as may be proper titles of small-scale works (especially songs).
"Wohin" from Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin "Crucifixus" from Bach's Mass in B Minor Schubert's "Kennst du das Land"
Popular titles of compositions are also usually set in quotation marks:
Beethoven's Symphony no. 3 ("Eroica") Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony Chopin's "Winter Wind" Etude
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.
Beethoven's Symphony no. 5, op. 67 Beethoven's Symphony op. 67 The Allegro con brio and Scherzo from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony Chopin's Waltz in C-sharp Minor
Use the following conventions for capital letters in titles.
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)
Italian: the first word, proper names (Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro)
Pitch classes are named in capital letters, a convention that will sometimes suffice for exact pitches also:
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).
Separate a series of pitches or pitch classes by dashes: C–C#–D
Keys and chords are named in capital letters:
E major A minor C-sharp minor C# minor
Specify passages of music, when possible, by measure numbers (m. = measure; mm. = measures; do not begin a sentence with an abbreviation).
The introduction occupies only mm. 1-2. The cellos enter with the principal theme in m. 3. Measures 155-401 constitute the development section.