Bruno Monsaingeon & Kit Armstrong: Music Beyond the Instrument

Composition, Transcription and the Art of Reinvention

A public conversation between Bruno Monsaingeon and Kit Armstrong, with musical examplesHow does an instrument shape the music conceived for it? And what happens when music is performed on an instrument different from the one for which it was originally written?

In this public conversation, Bruno Monsaingeon and Kit Armstrong explore the constantly evolving relationship between musical ideas and the instruments that give them sound. From Renaissance polyphony, where the number and interaction of voices could determine the very architecture of a composition, to later instrumental music, in which range, technique and physical possibilities directly influence musical form and imagination, instruments have always played an active role in shaping the music written for them.

Yet much of the music we perform today is heard on instruments—and with techniques—very different from those known to its composers. Transcription makes this transformation explicit: moving music from one instrument to another becomes an act of translation, but also, at times, of creative reinvention.

Drawing on their own experience as performers, composers, arrangers and passionate advocates of transcription, Monsaingeon and Armstrong will discuss what can—and should—be preserved when music crosses from one instrument to another, what inevitably changes, and what new possibilities can emerge.

Musical examples and some of their own transcriptions will accompany the conversation.