Writing, Reading, and the Study of Literature

M R. VICE-CHANCELLOR, Ladies, Gentlemen, Some of you may have been present on another such occasion, three years ago, when Jonathan Harvey delivered his inaugural lecture as professor of music at this University. If you were, you will recall that Jonathan began his lecture with a massive disclaimer: am a composer first foremost, he said in effect, and so you will have to forgive me if I do not talk very well, for talking does not come naturally to one who works primarily with notes. Actually he began even more disarmingly, for before he said a word he switched on a tape recorder played us the opening bars of his most recent composition. It was only after he had done this that he made the statement I have just quoted. I listened to the lecture, as you must have done, with intense interest admiration. It isn't often, after all, that we have the privilege of listening to a leading modern composer talking about his work. But I listened also, I must confess, with a certain amount of envy. For I thought: Yes, a composer can start a lecture in this way, but a writer can't. And yet I, as a writer, feel myself to be in a position very similar to Jonathan's. I too feel that I am better, or, at any rate, more at ease, in making artefacts than in talking about them. But surely, you will say, that is absurd. A composer, after all, works with notes, so that it is perfectly understandable for him to say that he is not very good at speaking. But what excuse does a writer have, since his medium is words? I am not sure about excuses. But what I want to insist on is this

Art · Linguistics · Literature · Reading (process) · Digital Humanities and Scholarship · History · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Philosophy · Poetry Analysis and Criticism

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  Open Access•Brian Macaskill•postmedieval a journal of…•2013

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