Overture

Abstract

An overture introduces musical themes. Performed by itself or as an introduction to a larger work, an overture provides a synopsis meant to interest listeners in hearing the entire piece. Although the lines in this literary overture may not make you sing along, as you might at a concert, they suggest themes subsequently recognizable in the movements that follow. And these themes lead to another definition of the term “overture”: an intellectual seduction or approach that precedes a proposition. In this sense, the entire book is an overture. My proposition invites you to consider music in a seemingly nonmusical space: the static black-and-white pages of novels. Going further, I mean to bypass books with obvious musical themes in order to consider novels that appear to make no pretensions to musicality.