Turning ink blots into Music - the meaning and madness of notation

It is the difficult job of a composer to turn his or her musical idea into a notation that the performer can understand. And it is the equally difficult job of a performer to translate that notation back into a musical line. Using works from the classical and romantic string quartet repertoire, Cal Wiersma and his willing ACMP member partners will explore the process of decoding musical notation to begin to answer that eternal question – how do I turn these dots, dashes, squigglies, slurs, round blotches and straight lines into MUSIC? How does one decide what to make of all of this maddeningly imprecise notation?

Cal Wiersma will lecture and demonstrate his ideas by working with a live string quartet:

Shawn Barnett and Corinne Bennett, violins
Marandi Hostetter, viola
Sam Brinkley, cello

You will come away with some inspiration, and new tools for making decisions about those pesky dots, dashes, carrots, hairpins, etc in the music of your favorite Classical and Romantic composers!

Join us live in Brooklyn or sign up for the live stream! (We will send the link closer to the date.)

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher ACMP