Estimated time to complete this section: 18 minutes
Specific musical works, as well as performances of musical works, provide a record of history and culture. Music reflects the debates and explorations of manners, morals, politics, and social change in a given space and time. Comprehensive analysis of music moves beyond viewing these texts as simple reflections; it also examines the ways they interact with other texts and sources (including other pieces of music, cover art, promotional materials, or costuming), as well as the multiple ways they might have been interpreted, performed and used over time.
There are three components to music analysis: analyzing the music as a document, analyzing its historical contexts, and determining its meaning(s). Each component of analysis will require the use of other documents that may be in library holdings: for example, song lyrics, tunes, and arrangements may be located in a variety of printed materials, such as manuscripts, broadsides and sheet music. Other sources, such as photographs, sheet music covers, trade publications, fan clubs and magazines, and business records, and personal papers may provide information regarding historical context, as well as meaning.
3.6 Video
- Two Blues Songs (Total Video Time: 15:56; video transcripts on page)
| Analyzing Music as a Document | -Who created the music?
-Who are the musicians involved? -When was the music created? -What is the music’s structure?
-What instruments were used? |
| Analyzing the Primary Contexts of Music: those that would have been most important to people at the time of the music’s creation, and might have shaped it | -When and where was the music originally published or performed?
-In what style(s) or genre(s) can the music be placed? -Who published or performed it? -Why was the music created? -Why was it published or performed? -If published or recorded, what technology(ies) were used? (i.e, cylinders or records; CD or mp3; cassettes or sheet music) |
| Analyzing the Secondary Contexts of Music: those emerging after the song’s creation that might help in understanding its significance | -Did the music take on a life of its own?
-What have people said and written about the song? -How was the song described by its creators and early performers? -How have audiences responded to or interpreted the song? |
adapted from Ronald Walters and John Spitzer, “Making Sense of American Popular Song,” History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web,http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/Songs/, June 2003.