Abstract
WHILE STILL A GRADUATE STUDENT in music theory, I began to notice that informal, figurative language conveyed and encouraged a vital engagement with music in ways that I missed in many analytical texts. I came to this realization from a typical music-theoretical position of skepticism about the value of metaphorical language that was shaken by a student in an analysis class. Initially enthusiastic and talkative about her sense of how pieces go, she eventually became silent and sullen. I attributed the change to my discouraging her from using language that I found imprecise and embarrassingly personal, but that she apparently found vividly informative. My dissertation examines ways that metaphorical descriptions of musical works provide information about pieces that is not available through technical language.' I taped three groups of musicians in conversations
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