When you take courses in music, you may be asked to write any of the following:
Response papers
A response paper is your personal reflection on a piece of music, a composer, a performance, or your own progress as a musician. Your instructor may ask you to write the paper as a brief assignment or as part of a journal that you keep during the course. The purpose of personal response is to brainstorm some initial ideas or to reflect on a work you are studying or a concert you attended. These writing activities will help you generate topics for larger, more formal projects. To help you focus your attention on particular elements of a performance, your instructor may provide questions you can use in forming your response. Your instructor might assign a response paper after you attend a concert and then later require a concert review using your response paper as a starting point. Thus a response paper can help you move from your immediate reactions to a more objective piece of writing. To be sure that your responses are useful for later assignments, make them detailed and thorough. Avoid simply writing that you like or dislike a particular work or performer. Instead, provide details that illustrate exactly why you have that particular reaction.
Program notes
When people attend a formal concert or a recital, they are usually given a program that lists the pieces they will hear and describes those pieces so they can understand and appreciate the music they will hear. Those descriptions are called program notes. A program note usually includes a biographical profile of the composer, background information about the composer’s historical period, some mention of the first performance of the piece with a list or survey of major performances, and a description of the piece. The description will guide audience members through the performance, describing what they can expect to hear in each section of the piece. One kind of program note is a profile of each performer, describing the performer’s major accomplishments and listing schools attended and major past performances. It may also give a brief discography, a listing of recordings that the performer has made professionally. Writing program notes will require you to do some research so you can provide the information readers expect to enhance their enjoyment and understanding of the performance. Think of program notes as small research papers that teach your readers about the music they are going to listen to.
Press releases
A press release is a brief document of no more than 250 words announcing an upcoming musical event to the general public. It is written by the event’s organizers and distributed locally for publication in newspapers, in magazines, and on Web sites and as announcements on radio and television. Begin a press release with a one- or two-sentence statement giving the most important information about the event: what it is, who the main performers will be, and the time, date, and location of the event. Your press release can continue with a description of the composers and performers who will be featured. The press release should conclude with any other relevant information such as cost, parking, and a Web site or phone number where readers can get more information.
Concert reviews
Concert reviews might be the most popular kind of writing about music. The reviewer attends a concert, listens actively and intently, and tells readers about the experience. When you write a concert review, begin by engaging your audience with one or more sentences that capture the quality and mood of the entire performance. Tell readers what composers and works were featured and who the performers were. Then write about each part of the concert. Briefly describe what was played and how it was played, stating your opinions about the music and the performers, with examples to illustrate your opinions. You might also integrate historical information about the composer, the piece of music, or the performers. Vivid words and active sentences will give readers a sense of how it felt to attend the performance.
Journal articles
Musicologists research and write about the history and literature of music, and they analyze works of music. They publish their interpretations in scholarly journals and present their work at professional conferences. You may be assigned a paper that involves research and musical analysis. A typical assignment might ask you to explain how a composition reflects its historical period or to trace trends in music in a time period or region. You might explore larger issues such as music in mass media or how technology has changed music. Your assignment might ask you to focus on a relatively unknown composer, performer, or work. If you are writing a journal article about the teaching of music, you might write a how-to paper that proposes an improved way to do something—how to rehearse a high school band more effectively, how to teach jazz improvisation, or how to start a school chamber music festival, for example. A paper of that type would involve reading articles, interviewing teachers and administrators, and using personal observations and experiences.
Grant proposals
Musicians and music teachers often apply for funding to support their projects. They might request money to purchase new equipment for their schools, to organize a summer workshop or camp, to travel to a library for research, or to attend a summer academy or workshop for intense study with well-known teachers. Whether you write a grant proposal on a form provided by the funding agency or draft your own, it typically includes several sections: