Write All These Down: Essays on Music

Write All These Down: Essays on Music brings together Joseph Kerman's selected writings from several decades of music criticism and scholarship. The collection spans opera, chamber music, music criticism, and musicology from the 18th through 20th centuries. Kerman examines composers including Beethoven, Mozart, and William Byrd through detailed musical analysis and historical context. His essays address topics ranging from specific compositions to broader questions about music criticism, interpretation, and academic study. The book reflects Kerman's dual roles as both music critic and musicologist, combining close readings of scores with discussion of performance practices and reception history. The writing maintains accessibility while engaging with complex musical and theoretical concepts. The essays reveal Kerman's perspective on the relationship between scholarship and criticism, suggesting ways these approaches can inform and strengthen each other in the study of music. His work demonstrates the value of combining analytical rigor with cultural understanding in musical discourse.

This book has very limited online reader reviews available, with only a handful of ratings found across academic and retail sites. Readers appreciated Kerman's detailed analysis of musical criticism and his examination of how music scholars approach their work. Academic reviewers noted his methodical breakdown of musical analysis techniques and perspectives on contemporary classical music. Some readers found the writing style dense and academic, requiring significant background knowledge in music theory and criticism to fully grasp the concepts. Available Ratings: Goodreads: No ratings WorldCat: No user reviews Google Books: No user reviews Amazon: No customer reviews JSTOR: 3 academic reviews The limited number of public reader reviews makes it difficult to draw broader conclusions about general reader reception. Most discussion appears in academic journals rather than consumer review platforms. Note: This summary relies on a very small sample of available reviews and should be considered incomplete.

Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology by Joseph Kerman A collection of essays examining the methodological foundations and critical approaches in musicology during the late twentieth century.

The Classical Style by Charles Rosen A technical analysis of musical form and structure in the works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven through specific musical examples and score studies.

Music in Renaissance Magic by Gary Tomlinson An investigation into the relationship between musical thought and magical-philosophical traditions in the Renaissance period through primary sources and cultural analysis.

The Joy of Music by Leonard Bernstein A series of essays and conversations exploring musical analysis, composition, and interpretation through the examination of specific works in the classical repertoire.

Style and Music by Leonard Meyer A systematic study of musical style evolution and the relationship between cultural constraints and compositional choices in Western music history.

🎵 Joseph Kerman was one of the most influential music critics of the 20th century, writing for The Hudson Review for over 50 years 📚 The book's essays span nearly four decades (1959-1994) of Kerman's writing career, covering topics from Beethoven to William Byrd 🎼 Kerman coined the term "masterpiece ghetto" to describe how certain classical works became isolated from their historical context due to their perceived greatness 🎓 As a professor at UC Berkeley, Kerman revolutionized musicology by advocating for a more critical, less purely analytical approach to studying music 🎭 The book's title "Write All These Down" comes from a quote by William Byrd, a 16th-century English composer whom Kerman studied extensively and helped bring back to prominence