Writing and Music: Album Liner Notes

A deceptive aspect of the ‘writing about music is like dancing about architecture’ cliché is the function of the preposition ‘about’. Literature and music, dance and architecture, painting and film – all are discrete aesthetic forms that nonetheless simultaneously feed off and provide nourishment for each other as part of art’s perpetual drive toward diversity and innovation. Nowhere is the aptness of the association between writing and music more obvious than in the phenomenon of album liner notes. Rather than merely an attempt at describing or translating musical experience, liner notes contribute to the dialogue between composer and listener and are a significant part of the culture of contemporary music.