I couldn’t be bothered to count the number of issues that face a nascent music publication today. Needless to say, there are many. Most are matters of logistics and practicality. These are, perhaps, worth discussing at a later time, but today I’d like to address a much more important, much more fundamental question:

Why should we bother? Why write about music? And furthermore, why read about it?

Well, the obvious answer is “because we enjoy it”. But that’s not really getting to the heart of the matter. I believe that, in order to understand what makes music worth writing about, we must understand the source of its appeal, and the best way to do that is to look at its function. Why do human beings make music in the first place?

In an essay entitled “Why I Write,” George Orwell asked the same question (though of writing), and came up with four universal reasons for producing a work of literature. Orwell may have chosen to focus his essay specifically on prose, but his reasons can be applied with equal pertinence to any art form, including music.

Orwell’s first reason is “sheer egoism”. This is hardly ever a musician’s only motive for composing a piece, but it is almost always present. When a musician writes a song, he wants the world to know that it is his song – that it came from his creative mind and reflects his creative and technical abilities as a singer or instrumentalist. Musicians want to be talked about and remembered.

In moderation, egoism is a good thing. The desire to be the best, or at least to be “good”, drives musicians to improve; and, in fact, without egoism, musicians would seldom have reason to perform for others. Why would a guitarist take the stage unless she felt that she had something to offer? If she is going to play for an audience, she must first believe that she is worth hearing. Audiences may value a self-effacing demeanor, but the mere act of performing implies that the musician has pride in herself and her work.

Despite its ubiquity, egoism is only one motive for composition and performance; there are certainly other, more “selfless” reasons for creating music.

One such reason is “historical impulse”, or music composed for the sake of posterity. Think of the medieval troubadours who wandered from court to court, singing stories of heroes and brave deeds. Think of the American folk music that chronicled the stories of the Old West. Think of opera, the Japanese Shinnai tradition, or even Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.

The historical impulse is equally present, though perhaps slightly less obvious, in the popular music of today. Whether you’re into bluegrass, pop, or metal, think of how many songs tell a story, or describe a break-up or an otherwise particularly good or bad day.

If it’s beginning to seem as if the historical nature of music hinges solely upon the lyrics, I would like to refer you to programmatic music (so named because it was originally intended to complement a text, or program, that recounted a story). It has long since become commonplace, however, to compose programmatic music without an accompanying text. Two more famous examples include Haydn’s Time of Day symphonies and Johannes Kuhnau’s biblical sonata, which delineates the epic battle between David and Goliath.