I learned to play the piano when I was around four years old and I’ve continued playing until today. Learning the piano has given me a strong foundation in musical theory and lately I’ve thought a lot about how reading and analyzing a piece of text can be similar to the way some musicians will analyze music.
Whenever going over a classical piece, my piano teacher would often talk about how the composer’s intent and all the different interpretations of the song. Many people think that a sheet of music is simply a set of instructions on how to play a certain song, and while that’s not necessarily false, that depiction doesn’t exactly capture the depth and intricacies of songwriting. When it comes to writing music, my piano teacher enjoyed talking about why a certain note written in a certain octave or why the composer chose to use a certain pacing for a song. It’s this kind of analysis that I’ve likened to reading in an academic setting when we do a rhetorical analysis for a certain text.
I’ve also likened it to academic reading because the only time I ever analyze a text, musical or academic, it’s done so under the instruction of a teacher. I very rarely look at a book I’m reading and begin to pick it apart the way we do in a class, and the same goes for a song I’m playing except for when I’m with my piano teacher.
