Music Quote by Donal Henahan

A brain "softening" from too much music is a deliciously suspicious diagnosis, the kind you deliver with a raised eyebrow and a pencil poised over the review copy. Donal Henahan frames listening not as refinement but as a risky indulgence, then springs the trap: the real hazard isn’t sonic pleasure, it’s what follows - the compulsion to write about it.

The line turns on a gleeful mangling of expectation. We’re primed for "intent to commit violence" or some other moral panic; instead we get "prose", treated as a felony. That substitution is the joke and the critique. Henahan is skewering a certain species of arts writing (often his own ecosystem): the over-listened, over-thought response that melts into florid metaphor, grand claims, and compensatory eloquence. Music, ineffable and bodily, tempts the critic into asserting control through language; "incessant listening" becomes not devotion but provocation, pushing the writer toward performative interpretation.

"Softening" carries its own subtext: a fear that immersion in beauty can dissolve rigor, that critics can go tender where they should stay sharp. It’s also self-protective comedy - a way to admit vulnerability to music’s spell while keeping one’s professional dignity intact. If Henahan wrote this in the context of classical criticism (where he’s often situated), it lands as an insider’s jab at the tradition of treating concerts as raw material for ornate copy. The punchline is bleakly affectionate: music makes us want to translate it, and that urge, however well-meaning, is where the trouble starts.