In some ways, music is a lot like literature. It can be pleasing, enlightening, even life-changing. A great song, like a great book, affects the listener in unanticipated ways and resonates long after the music has ceased. And, if done well, both music and literature have a rhythm and tone unique to their authors.
But how do you describe your favorite song? How do you put its melody into words or explain the beauty of its chords? How do you begin to describe the emotions that it provokes in you? As the maxim goes, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” In other words, despite the similarities between literature and music, conveying sound through text is a challenge, even for the most talented writers.
“Music began clanging against the rocks up here. It is a motor horn down in the street,
Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own. Under the influence of music I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do not understand, to have powers which I cannot have … And music transports me immediately into the condition of the soul.”