The Language of Music: Representations of Music in Fiction or Why I Write

Abstract

This essay takes up the question of the different methods fiction writers use to represent music in their works. This inquiry prompts a meditation on the relationship between literature and music, the differing and overlapping goals of each, and what this relationship might mean for the practicing artist (literary or musical). The piece contends, after grappling with these questions, that it is the linguistic nature of fiction that gives it more fundamental access to the elements of the human experience. This observation brings the essay to a more personal sphere, in which the thinking done earlier in the essay is brought to bear on my own rejection of musicianship in favor of writing fiction.