Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's really a stupid thing to want to do.
-Elvis Costello
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A question, a mystery
Sunday, July 20, 2003
No one seems to know who first said "writing about music is like dancing about architecture."
Oh sure, lots of magazines and newspapers reference the quote, attributing it to the likes of Elvis Costello, Duke Ellington, Frank Zappa, Martin Mull, Miles Davis, Laurie Anderson, Steve Martin, Thelonious Monk, John Cage, Jon Berger, Woody Allen, Charles Mingus, Tom Waits, Robert Bly, Loudon Wainwright III, Nick Lowe, Eric Satie, Lester Bangs and many others.
But whose is it?
Sometimes writers cover themselves with craftily qualified phrasing like "thought to be said by" or "depending on whom you ask" or "or some other wag." Or, they get someone else quoting someone.
The Vancouver Sun in April 1994 quoted rock critic Laurie Brown quoting Costello quoting Ellington, for example. The Chicago Tribune in April 1990 quotes Roseanne Cash crediting Joni Mitchell.
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Costello takes the lead in getting credit, with Zappa and Mull not far behind, at least from what we could tell from a non-scientific perusal of the nearly 600 articles that the LexisNexis search engine turned up.
Google? Well, that got us more than 7,000 references. We're not even going there.
Alan P. Scott of Portland, Ore., who works for a school system, has a Web page devoted to the question (home. pacifier.com/=ascott/ they/tamildaa.htm). The page has taken on a life of its own since the mid-1990s, with a constant flow of e-mails, Scott wrote in an e-mail exchange.
The only specific reference we could track down is Costello in an interview with Timothy White in Musician magazine in October 1983, which Scott initially directed us to.
Architectural Record, in April of this year, also credits Costello, likening the quote to Goethe's, who described architecture as "frozen music."
We do know that Anderson did not say it. After a passing reference to the quote on National Public Radio and a flurry of e-mails about its origins afterward, Anderson was interviewed and said: "Oh, no, no. It's one of my absolute favorite quotes. . . . No, Steve Martin, the comedian, is the one who said it."
But Scott says that he's received many e-mails from those who insist the quote predates Costello. Some say its roots are far more classical, with the 19th-century pianist and composer Clara Schumann and 20th-century composer Igor Stravinsky being suggested as possible originators, Scott says.
A movie, a symphony and a music column have been titled after the quote, though the 1998 film was renamed "Playing by Heart," which starred Gillian Anderson and Sean Connery.
Then there are those who should keep their riffing to themselves, writers who, for example, compared "dancing about architecture" with writing about surfing, golf, love and band names.
One writer compared writing about art to "knitting about music" and another wrote that music writing is like "tap dancing about architecture."
Anders Parker, of the band Varnaline, frustrated by trying to explain his creative process, told the Houston Press last year that he'd "rather do a (expletive) jig about the Flatiron Building."
-- Mary Louise Schumacher
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Kvedja Kjartan Valdemarsson
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