Whether you know music or not, you may be asked to write an essay/analysis on a piece of music. If you’re a music major or thinking about studying music in college, get used to it! This task can feel a little overwhelming, especially if it is your first time writing about music. This article is tuned for people who have very little music knowledge on up to people who have some formal music theory courses under their belts. I think the tips, suggestions, and resources I provide are useful to anyone who is tasked with this kind of writing.

Your teacher or professor gave you some direction as to what they are looking for in your work, so I’ll be addressing the topic more generally and offering my own ideas. Always refer to your specific assigned requirements.

What should music analysis include?

Before we get to the step-by-step, here’s what I think most music analysis essays should include:

• Background of the music.
  • Context
  • Significant performances
• Background of the composer(s).
• Musical analysis
  • Timbre
  • Form
  • Harmony
  • Melody
  • Orchestration
  • Composition techniques
• Your own ideas and conclusions

So, how do you start analyzing music? I lay out some step to get you started below.

Step 1: Get to know the music

Before writing you should listen to the music many times. Each time you listen, try listening for different things. I suggest listening at least five times in five different ways.

1. Listen then write what the music made you feel or imagine. Did it take you on a ride? Did it make you think of your childhood? Jot down a few notes. Then try to articulate why it had that effect on you. Was it the melody? Was there a rhythm or specific instrument that pulled you on a journey?
2. Listen for instrumentation. What instruments do you hear? Are they playing all the time? What combinations of instruments did you hear? Is there any significance in the instrumentation that was chosen? Are these traditional instruments or perhaps all electronic?
3. Listen for dynamics. You can use a line on a page to indicate the dynamic shape of the music. Did it start out quiet and stay quiet for the entire piece? Or did it go up and down?
4. Listen for rhythm. What kind of rhythms did you hear? Were they steady throughout the piece? Did the rhythm become more complex in some places? Polyrhythms?
5. Listen for meter and tempo. Were you able to identify the meter? Did the music speed up or slow down? If yes, where in the music?

Once you have listened through five times with different ears on, I like to sketch what I think the music looks like visually. I use colors, shapes, figures, words, anything to attempt to capture the music on one sheet of paper.

Finally, to get the know the music, you must get the score or written version of the music. This will help you see things in the music you may not have heard. It will also be essential if you’re going to be doing detailed music analysis (see steps 5-7). If you have a good ear, you can make your own transcription of the piece.

Step 2: Get to know the composer

Whether you’re writing about Adele or Bartok, you need to know some background information about the composer. Some key things to know are:

• Full name
• Date of birth
• Date of death (if applicable)
• About their musical background/career
• Their other works
• Musical “trademarks” they have
• Where they live(d)

Having this knowledge before writing will help you add colorful details to your writing. Rather than simply listing these elements as facts, you’ll be able to sprinkle these facts into your paragraphs breathing a little more life into them.

Depending on the scope of the assignment, I wouldn’t recommend doing a deep dive into the composer but rather grab info from a few sources outside of Wikipedia.

• Interviews on youtube can be a great place to grab quotes and get to know more about the composer in their own words.
• Documentaries on youtube are great places to get a fast overview of the composer.
• Composer websites is a curated experience that the composer wanted you to experience.
• Fan websites
• Books about the composer or by the composer (if you have the time to read an entire book about the composer, this is where you will learn the most).

Step 3: Put the music in context

Nothing exists in a bubble, so figure out where this music fits in. Here are three parameters you may explore.

• Time era – When were they writing? What was the time like? Are we talking horses or Teslas? How does the time in which the composer wrote the music affect the music? Was the composer part of a particular music or art movement?
• Geography – Where in the world did the composer live and where did they write the music in question? Was it in the French countryside? Or an island off of Australia? Austin, Texas? Does the geography influence the music and in what ways?
• Within their works, when was this piece written?
  • Listen to the first piece of music this composer released (or the earliest one you can find), how is it similar or different?
  • Listen to the last piece of music released by this composer, how is it similar or different?
  • Was the music written during a particular phase or episode in the composer’s life? A bad breakup? The death of a child? Just won prestigious award? Was the composer overtly trying to say something?

With this knowledge, you’ll be able to add depth to your analysis.

Step 5: The Music’s Structure

Every type/genre of music has its own musical structures. Here are a few types of structures your piece may be using:

• Strophic – a specialized binary form where all verses are sung to the same music. You might see a song labeled with “A section and B section” or “verse and chorus”.
• Ternary – a three-part form typically ABA.
• Theme and variations
• Through composed – the music does not repeat sections (Bohemian Rhapsody uses this form).
• Sonata – be careful with this one, there are many variations.
• Chance

In tonal music (most music form the West) we have many cues to let us know the structure of the music. If there are lyrics, then there may be lyrical patterns that inform the structure of the music. Typically, it’s a combination of melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic cues that let the listener know where the end of a section is. Here is a quick example from Adele’s Hello that exemplifies three typical signs the phrase has ended.

1. The melody moves downward and finishes on the tonic.
2. The melodic rhythm ends on a long note.
3. The harmony ends on the tonic.

The key to analyzing musical structure is to find the major sections of the music and determine how the composer fit these sections together – how are the various sections related? There is a lot that can go into this part of the analysis, but at the very least you should know the basic structure of the piece.

For an in depth look at form and structure here is a book by Leon Stein, Anthology of Musical Forms — Structure & Style: The Study and Analysis of Musical Forms

Step 6: The notes

After the structure is understood, getting a handle on the melody, harmony, articulation, and dynamics is the next step. Once again, this can go as deep or shallow as you like. I’ll go over some of the basic elements to highlight in each area.

Melody

You will want to do some basic phrasal analysis, which entails understanding the smallest units of the melody that combined together to create the full melody. You are looking for how long the phrases are. How do they relate to each other? Are the phrases transposed, inverted, retrograded, etc…? But remember to keep in mind why it matters in the first place to understand this. I look at analysis as the practice of figuring out what “works” in music. What makes music communicate so powerfully? It’s easy to get lost in the minutia of the music and then not say anything important. How are the melodic phrases and structures related and how and why do you think this contributed to the music? Here is a brief example of how I’d start a melodic analysis. This is from MINUET No 1, in G Major by Mozart. This example is by no means exhaustive of how deep you can go analyzing melody.

• The pink dashed box shows the prime melodic unit – two eighth notes descending to a quarter note all slurred together.
• There are two short phrases that make up the red “phrase #1”. These two phrases are a descending sequence.
• The blue phrase #2 uses the prime melodic unit but shortens it by using it back to back.
• Phrase #2 in measure 8 ends on the dominant five chord – a half cadence.
• Phrase #1b begins with the prime melodic idea just transposed down a 6th from measure 1.
• Phrase #2b begins like phrase #2a but transposed down by a perfect 5th.
• The green arrows indicate a change in melodic direction at the same point in the phrase.
• Phrase #2b ends on a tonic – a perfect cadence. This type of cadence completes the section before it moves onto the a B section.

Harmony

If you’re a music student, you should probably go ahead and do a full roman numeral analysis. In some music, harmony will reveal many structures and patterns that hold the piece together. But be aware that many types of music place little to no importance on harmony. For example, one time I was analyzing a piece of traditional Thai music and very quickly found that there were only two harmonies used throughout the entire piece. It just went back and forth between a I (tonic) and a V (dominant). In a way the Roman numerals did their job by showing the harmony was not an element that the composer was used to hold the piece together. In most tonal music, the harmony is very important, but be careful to point out areas of harmonic interest rather than just rattle off the chords. Here are a few things to look for in harmony:

• harmonic rhythm
• cadences
• repetitions in progressions and how the repetitions are varied
• sequences
• modulations
• key changes
• how expectations may have been played with (did the composer end on a surprising chord? and why?)

articulation

It can be useful to pay attention to some of the less structural elements in the music, like articulation. Articulation is one of those aspects of the music that is riding on the surface playing a significant role in the experience of the music.

• legato: note are performed smooth and connected
• staccato: notes are shorter than their written rhythmic value
• tenuto: hold the note for the entire rhythmic value
• marcato: louder and more forceful
• accent: play the note with a little bite at the beginning of the note

dynamics

Dynamics are an important way for the composer to communicate. The very quiet sections can get an audience on the edge of their seats just as much as a loud section. Here are some basic dynamics volume terms:

• fortissimo = very loud
• forte = loud
• mezzo forte = kind of loud
• mezzo piano = kind of soft
• piano = quiet
• pianissimo = very quiet

Here are some terms to describe changing dynamics:

• crescendo = slowly get louder
• decrescendo = slowly get quieter
• diminuendo = slowly get quieter
• subito piano = suddenly perform at the piano volume level
• sforzando = suddenly loud

Step 7: Compositional techniques

Whether it’s Bon Iver or Bach, composers use compositional techniques to express themselves through the music. Every genre, composer, time period, geographic location, has their own unique set of established compositional techniques. I’m providing just the smallest sample of a few common techniques, but there are way to many to cover here.

• chance: a set of rules is created and the composer plays a game to generate musical ideas and content. For example, I have some dice. Every time I roll a “1” I write the tonic of my key. I roll again to determine the rhythmic value. And I roll again to determine the articulation. And this can go on and on. If you did this, then you’d be able to generate a piece by the roll of the dice – chance.
• repetition: self explanatory, just repeat a section.
• sequence: take a melody or piece of the music and repeat it but alter it by transposing it up or down. Usually, do this three or more times.
• pedal tones and bell tones: a pedal tone is a low pitch that is repeated over and over while the other parts change. A bell tone is a high pitch that is repeated over and over while the other parts change.
• textures: think of complex vs simple.
• counterpoint: layered melodic lines that follow carefully thought out rules of voice leading.
• range: low vs high and everything in between.

Step 8: Outline the essay

Now that you know the music, the composer, the context, and the specific musical elements of the piece, it’s time to start outlining what you’re going to say about this music. One common method for presenting music is to start wide and zoom in with every paragraph. Think of it like an opening shot of a movie. The camera is pulled out (an establishing shot) to give the viewer context. So maybe imagine a setup with something as big as a planet, a continent, country, or city. Then the camera moves in to a neighborhood or high rise, or field. Then we get in closer to the home where we find our protagonist. We can do the same thing throughout the musical essay. Here is an example outline I did for the essay I wrote on Alfred Schnittke – Concerto Grosso no. 1.

Five-paragraph essay outline

Introduction – zoomed out look at the context of the composer, time, location, performance, etc

Establish polystylism the compositional technique as my “protagonist.” Start zoomed out and discuss what polystylism is and other examples of this technique in use. Introduce Schnittke and his personal context. Get down to the piece and list a few of the styles that will be encountered in the music. Finally, deliver the thesis of the essay (the problem of the story), an examination of how to successfully deploy polystylism through consonance and dissonance.

Body paragraph #1- looking at polystylism across the entire piece and form

Discuss how many time styles are changed. Maybe present a chart showing the combinations of styles. Where’s the climax of the piece and what happens there?

Body paragraph #2 – zoom in a bit more and look at an entire section of a stylistic change

Give examples from a few different sections that show the stylistic writing of the various styles. For example, during a baroque section, show the counterpoint involved. Show the extended piano technique in the “contemporary” sections.

Body paragraph #3 – zoom in and look at the notes, articulations, orchestration, voice leading of the moment of change

Discuss what is happening in the music at one of the shifts from one style to another. What orchestration, textures, dynamics, and harmonic language is being used?

Conclusion – draw conclusions and say something interesting

Discuss the specific techniques Schnittke employed to transition between styles. What other contextual elements supported this music? If a composer wanted to use this as a case study, how would you distill down the polystylistic technique of Schnittke?