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[sympathyxo]

Writers do not write what they want, they write what they can. When I was 21 I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for The Simpsons who'd briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.
-Zadie Smith

Comments

[sweetlittlemary]

Oh my God, I love her.

[cosmikumquat]

it's kind of an odd thing... i feel like writing style is really ingrained, almost like handwriting, you can't really help it coming out the way it does -- but composers can write intentionally in any style they want. i wonder why music and writing are so different in that way.

[dfaran]

Are you so sure they are? I think musicians have their own styles too.

[sympathyxo]

Isn't it kind of a standard exercise for people learning to compose to try to imitate the styles of different composers? And isn't it also standard for someone who's learning to draw to more or less copy other artists' work line for line? I've never heard of anyone learning to write by intentionally copying someone else's style (not that I've never intentionally copied someone else, just that I've never really thought it was a GOOD thing to do).

[cosmikumquat]

yeah, that's very true. we had to write style studies in advanced music theory... then when i tried to find my own style, compose some abigail-pieces, i simply couldn't. i tried and tried, but i kept composing in the style of chopin or rachmaninoff or debussy. whereas with writing, it takes a very conscious effort to write in the style of someone else. i feel like it goes a step beyond pedagogy... it might be that language is learned at a younger age than music. maybe?