As someone who has dedicated most of their life to classical music, I did not initially apply to college as an English major but only as a performance major with the full intention of becoming a concert pianist. Although my long-term musical goals have not changed nor diminished over the past four years, something else unexpected happened along the way: my rediscovered passion and love for literature.

While I kept taking more English courses purely for fun, I encountered authors that not only drew inspiration from musical structures and concepts, but also books that made me feel as though I were experiencing a musical performance. Writers such as Virginia Woolf, who chose to incorporate fugal counterpoint into one of her novels, or Alfred Tennyson, who explored the sounds of spoken poetry, immediately caught my attention. Their blending of musical components into written language was truly so fascinating to me, and this synthesis made me reflect on how literature, like music, is a piece of art—and should be celebrated as such. We don't often think of these two mediums as being in dialogue with one another, but they actually share many striking similarities that, when intertwined, can enhance our reading experience in so many beautiful ways. By the end of my freshman year, I applied as a Dual Degree in English and piano.

One of my aspirations as an artist is to combine these two fields of study. On this blog (I also like to think of it as my love letters to music…) you can find analyses, persuasions, program notes, streams of consciousness, rants and strung-out thought bubbles on anything that crosses/has crossed my mind. From searching for Schumann’s narrative voice to exploring Woolf’s “fugal” voice in The Waves, I hope you enjoy these entries!