Follow-up: Musical Cryptograms!

After a lesson about the celebrated Russian-Soviet composer Dimitri Schostakovich (1919-1975), who was noted for using a haunting melodic theme derived from the letters of his name, Karl wanted to write a melody derived from the letters of his own name.

To accomplish this, Karl used note names from various systems, from the English system, to the Japanese, Indian, and even Byzantine systems. You can find a breakdown of different note naming systems here. I also included a list in my book.

Karl at the piano working on his musical cryptogram.

Karl was lucky: every letter in his name corresponds to a note! As a result, he was able to create a long beautiful melody.

While Karl has yet to produce a full-length composition using his cryptogram, he enjoyed the first step in the process. I hope you did, too.

More later!