Writing for the aurally engaged reader: focusing words with music in an age of digital mediation

This article reviews three books and uses these as motivation to consider the changing conditions for the discourse communities which define musicology and its companion disciplines. More specifically, the books inspire a re-evaluation of the contemporary conditions of musical experience, activity, and research in a digitally oriented sound–word publishing world. The article notes a growing body of disciplinary literature that interacts with, or presumes, the presence of a particular readership that not only reads, but actively listens, while reading. It encourages a more aurally directed way of writing and suggests that musicology and its companion disciplines should continue to explore more coherent ways to link words to music.