John Hawkins Writing Style Essay

When looking at music, people tend to consider the past to understand what our ancestors created and consider the process they used to create them. One of the many aspects of music historians is to analyze the music and rely it back onto the public for them to understand what music meant to the people of the past. Each historian has their own writing style. Two examples of the earliest music historians are Charles Burney and John Hawkins. They both have their own distinct way of writing their views of music history. By reading excerpts of their works, we can discover their attitudes towards music and how they tell the public their thoughts in their writing styles. From analyzing Charles Burney’s text, A General History of Music, from the Earliest Ages to the Present: (1776-86) “Essay on the Musical Criticism”, Burney is straight-forward and clear. He seems to be arrogant, yet intelligent. He thinks through each sentence and has a well-developed point. There does not seem to be any unstated values in his writing. He addresses the audience, like they are his students and he is the professor. He writes with a mixture of informal and formal vocabulary that makes it easier to follow along, while being professional.

Hawkins has a tenacity to come across arrogant like Burney, but it is more difficult to read. The audience is not clear to Hawkins in his writing. However, it is assumed that the audience is someone of his same intellectual level, a colleague or another music historian. The points that he tries to explain aren’t clear and he uses an unnecessary amount of vocabulary. Reading Hawkins’ A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (1776): “Conclusion”, it is hard to distinguish his views on music and composers, though he does make some clear point. In his text, he mentions the declination of music practice and how music isn’t respected as it should