MAIN POINTS:
• The opening should be strong: You’ll never have more people paying more attention.
• The opening should inform and engage.
• Prioritize clear communication.
You’ll never have more people paying more attention than at the opening. So, as a writer or speaker or musician, it’s worth investing time and energy to strengthen this section of whatever it is you’re doing.
To illustrate this point, consider this recollection of violist Max Raimi, writing about orchestral auditions:
Many years ago, our former Music Director here in Chicago, Daniel Barenboim, insisted that we have violists play the opening of the solo viola part to Mozart’s “Sinfonia Concertante” at auditions. It is not at all technically demanding. But I was astonished at how after six measures—perhaps twelve seconds of music—I knew everything I needed to know about whomever I was listening to.
The opening tells the audience everything they need to know. Others have said the same thing for, literally, thousands of years. To summarize their commentary, the opening must inform and engage.
READ MORE – Beethoven Piano Concerto 4
The content in this section elaborates on the post but is not essential.
In his 4th piano concerto, Ludwig van Beethoven rejects the customary opening of a concerto, in which the orchestra ”speaks“ first. Instead, he gives the opening statement to the soloist. The effect is disorienting for the audience, who see a symphony orchestra capable of the grandest instrumental music of their time but hear sounds indistinguishable from what they themselves might play with their own two hands at their own piano in their own home. The orchestra is disoriented, too: they soon take back control, but they play in the wrong key. Music critic Conrad Wilson describes this music as “audibly alien.“
We don’t need to get bogged down with analytical details of how Beethoven achieved this effect to appreciate that he never lost sight of the basic expectations of an opening. He informs the listener of the tension between soloist and ensemble that will occupy the entire composition, and he engages the listener with thwarted expectations and disorienting sounds.
Beethoven also reminds us that, beyond inform and engage, an opening must also acknowledge the conventions of the genre or style in which it’s conceived. (Conventions are characteristics and expectations shared between an author and their audience, such as the orchestral start to a concerto.) This particular concerto is a clever counter-example, in which Beethoven acknowledges the orchestra-first convention by conspicuously giving the opening statement to the soloist.
If you’re not Beethoven, it’s far better to be clear than clever, especially at the opening. “Be clear,” declare the authors of The Elements of Style, the best-known writing guide of the last century, “Clarity, clarity, clarity.” Clarity and sophistication are not mutually exclusive though. You don’t need to be Beethoven, or a Beethoven specialist, to appreciate the coexistence of those two features of the opening of his fourth piano concerto.
Potent effects are possible in professional writing, too.
In the opening of a cover letter, for example, express your intention to apply for an opportunity while also noting specific experience and qualifications that make you an especially strong candidate. You’ll be even better off if you can convey excitement about some aspect of the position. The result is an opening that informs and engages the reader, satisfies their expectations for a cover letter, and signals that you are well qualified and well disposed for the position or opportunity.
That’s a strong start. It’s no guarantee of a successful outcome, but you’re certain to set yourself apart from an equally qualified candidate who opens with a generic statement. ”I was glad to learn about position X, and I am writing to apply.” Such openings are common. They fail to inform, though, and they fail to engage. By signalling a lack of familiarity with the details of the specific opportunity, they practically beg a review committee to move on to the next applicant. In other words, they tell the reader everything they need to know … none of it good.
I’ll use my own material to show how this concept might be applied in a biography. (It seems only fair at the outset to subject my own materials to critique.) Here is the opening you’ll find on the About page:
Andrew Shryock works with musicians to achieve their professional goals with clear and engaging writing.
My intention is to satisfy the objectives of an opening, inform the reader of my professional activities in a way that is engaging enough to keep reading. I don’t want to lose sight of convention either, specifically the reader’s expectation to read about who I am and what I do. Whether or not the opening is engaging is, of course, subjective, though I hope you’ll agree this version is preferable to earlier ones.
Andrew Shryock provides classical musicians with guidance for forging an identity and achieving professional goals through clear and effective writing attuned with their artistic activities.
It’s weaker, right? It’s too long. I’m trying too hard. Using the words “guidance,” “forging,” and “attuned” say less about me and my work than my dependence on a thesaurus. But even this was an improvement over where I began.
Andrew Shryock is a musicologist whose research examines intersections of music, literature, and aesthetics in eighteenth-century England and specifically in the oratorios of George Frideric Handel.
This one is entirely out of tune. It struggles to inform, due mainly to its density and stuffy tone, and it’s far from engaging. Further, it’s irrelevant to the work I’m doing on this site. Despite these flaws, I struggled to let go of it. It represented a professional path I once envisioned for myself. If I’m completely transparent, it was designed to impress my graduate school mentors, dissertation committee, and colleagues. Inform and engage? Not so much. No surprise, then, that this version fails to do both. Eventually, though, I found a way to turn down the volume of the voice inside my own head. I replaced this version with something that might actually be useful for the readers I was actually addressing.
You can do this, too.
READ MORE – Charlotte’s Web
The content in this section elaborates on the post but is not essential.
I’ll close with a few words on the excellent opening of the children’s novel Charlotte’s Web. The first sentence places the reader at the breakfast table in the farmhouse kitchen of 8-year-old Fern Arable.
“Where’s Papa going with that axe?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.
With this casual question, author E. B. White prepares Fern to encounter the story’s central themes, the value of friendship and loyalty as well as the complexity of a world that interweaves joy with sorrow. He engages the reader, too, nudging them onward to discover how Fern’s mother responds to her daughter. For the reader of the book’s first edition, with its cover image of Fern clutching a visibly worried piglet, her mother’s response is predictable: “Out to the hoghouse … one of the pigs is a runt.”
Like Barenboim’s viola audition, this simple yet sophisticated opening tells the audience everything they need to know. About Fern. About the piglet. About the heart of the story that follows. In a book in which words save lives, is it any surprise to observe its author thinking seriously about effective writing at the opening?
E. B. White wasn’t content to stop there. Five years after Charlotte’s Web, he began work on his next major project: a writing guide informally called “the little book.” More than ten million copies have been sold under its formal title, The Elements of Style.
All this to say, devote time to your opening. Make it clear. Make it engaging. Give your audience everything they need to know.
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