From 1997 to 1998 Kerman held the Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Chair at Harvard University, where he gave a series of public lectures on the importance of approaching musical texts and performances via a "close reading" similar to that used in literary studies, a theme that was central to many of his writings. The Norton lectures were published in 1998 as "Concerto Conversations". Kerman has written regularly for "The New York Review of Books" since 1977 and was a founding editor of the journal, "19th-Century Music". Critical essays written by Kerman from the late 1950s to the early 1990s are collected in his 1994 book, "Write All These Down", which takes its title from a phrase in one of William Byrd's songs.