Ithaca College

Professor Timothy Johnson (Chair, Music Theory, History, and Composition) presented on Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices and its relationship to Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings at UMass-Amherst and led a gallery exploration for students and faculty at MASS MoCA.

On October 18 Professor Timothy Johnson gave an invited lecture in the Research in Music Series at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst. His talk, “Caroline Shaw’s Musical Interactions with Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawings in Partita for 8 Voices,” described how Shaw incorporates texts from LeWitt’s wall drawings at MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), and also how she reflects on and reacts to these works musically. She engages with wall drawings in terms of content, construction, and conception—extending well beyond the textual borrowings on the surface.

On the following day Professor Johnson led students and faculty in “Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawings and Caroline Shaw’s Partita: A Gallery Exploration” at MASS MoCA in North Adams. LeWitt’s wall drawings consist of lines, shapes, broad swaths of colors, and points, as rendered on walls by drafting technicians based on his instructions. LeWitt’s instructions also appear along with each image, allowing viewers to observe relationships between LeWitt’s instructions and the visual results. Professor Johnson’s guided tour and learning experience provided a framework and context for students and faculty to contemplate the processes and observe the products that result from LeWitt’s approach, as exhibited in this long-term retrospective, and to consider how these shapes and processes inspired Shaw's Partita.