Conlon Nancarrow
Encyclopedia
Conlon Nancarrow was a United States-born composer who lived and worked in Mexico for most of his life. He became a Mexican citizen in 1955.
Nancarrow is best remembered for the pieces he wrote for the player piano
. He was one of the first composers to use musical instruments as mechanical machines, making them play far beyond human performance ability. He lived most of his life in relative isolation, not becoming widely known until the 1980s.
. He played trumpet
in a jazz
band in his youth, before studying music first in Cincinnati, Ohio
and later in Boston, Massachusetts with Roger Sessions
, Walter Piston
and Nicolas Slonimsky
. He met Arnold Schoenberg
during that composer's brief stay in Boston in 1933.
In Boston, Nancarrow joined the Communist Party
. When the Spanish Civil War
broke out, he traveled to Spain to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
in fighting against Francisco Franco
. He was interned by the French at the Gurs internment camp in 1939. Upon his return to the United States in 1939, he learned that his Brigade colleagues were having trouble getting their U.S. passport
s renewed. After spending some time in New York City, Nancarrow moved to Mexico in 1940 to escape this harassment.
He visited the USA briefly in 1947, but became a Mexican citizen in 1956. His next appearance in the USA was in San Francisco for the New Music America festival in 1981 and he traveled regularly in the following years. In 1985 he consulted a lawyer about the possibility of returning to his native country. He was told that he would have to sign a statement swearing that he had been "young and foolish" when he embraced Communism, which he refused to do. Consequently, he continued living in Las Águilas, Mexico City
, until his death at age 84. Though he had a few friends among Mexican composers, he was largely ignored by the Mexican musical establishment.
Nevertheless, it was in Mexico that Nancarrow did the work he is best known for today. He had already written some music in the United States, but the extreme technical demands they made on players meant that satisfactory performances were very rare. That situation did not improve in Mexico's musical environment, also with few musicians available who could perform his works, so the need to find an alternative way of having his pieces performed became even more pressing. Taking a suggestion from Henry Cowell
's book New Musical Resources, which he bought in New York in 1939, Nancarrow found the answer in the player piano
, with its ability to produce extremely complex rhythm
ic patterns at a speed far beyond the abilities of humans.
Cowell had suggested that just as there is a scale of pitch frequencies, there might also be a scale of tempi. Nancarrow undertook to create music which would superimpose tempi in cogent pieces, and by his twenty-first composition for player piano, had begun "sliding" (increasing and decreasing) tempi within strata. (see: William Duckworth, Talking Music.) Nancarrow later said that if electronic
resources had been available to him at this time, he would have probably written music for them, but they were not.
Temporarily buoyed by an inheritance, Nancarrow traveled to New York City in 1947 and bought a custom-built manual punching machine to enable him to punch the piano roll
s. The machine was an adaptation of one used in the commercial production of rolls, and using it was very hard work and very slow. He also adapted the player pianos, increasing their dynamic
range by tinkering with their mechanism and covering the hammers with leather
(in one player piano) and metal (in the other) so as to produce a more percussive
sound. On this trip to New York he also met Cowell and heard a performance of John Cage
's Sonatas and Interludes
for prepared piano
(also influenced by Cowell's aesthetics), which would later lead to Nancarrow modestly experimenting with prepared piano in his Study #30.
Nancarrow's first pieces combined the harmonic
language and melodic
motifs
of early jazz
pianists like Art Tatum
with extraordinarily complicated metrical
schemes. The first five rolls he made are called the Boogie-Woogie
Suite (later assigned the name Study No. 3 a-e). His later works were abstract, with no obvious references to any music apart from Nancarrow's.
Many of these later pieces (which he generally called studies
) are canon
s in augmentation or diminution
or prolation canon
s. While most canons using this device, such as those by Johann Sebastian Bach
, have the tempo
s of the various parts in quite simple ratios, like 2:1, Nancarrow's canons are in far more complicated ratios. The Study No. 40, for example, has its parts in the ratio e
:pi
, while the Study No. 37 has twelve individual melodic lines, each one moving at a different tempo.
Having spent many years in obscurity, Nancarrow benefited from the 1969 release of an entire album of his work by Columbia Records as part of a brief flirtation of the label's classical division with modern avant-garde music.
In 1976-77, Peter Garland
began publishing Nancarrow's scores in his Soundings journal, and Charles Amirkhanian
began releasing recordings of the player piano works on the 1750 Arch label - thus at age 65 Nancarrow started coming to wide public attention. He became better known in the 1980s, and was lauded as one of the most significant composers of the century. The composer György Ligeti
called his music "the greatest discovery since Webern
and Ives
... the best of any composer living today".
In 1982 he received a MacArthur Award which paid him $300,000 over 5 years. This increased interest in his work prompted him to write for conventional instruments, and he composed several works for small ensembles.
The complete contents of Nancarrow's studio, including the player piano rolls, the instruments, the libraries, and other documents and objects, are now in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. The Germans Jürgen Hocker and Wolfgang Heisig are the current live performers of Nancarrow's rolls using similar acoustic instruments. Other performers of his works (often in arrangement for live musicians) include Thomas Adès
, Alarm Will Sound
and ensemble Calefax from the Netherlands who also recorded the Studies for player piano, already called 'Best CD of 2009' by Dutch newspaper Het Parool
. American clarinetist and composer Evan Ziporyn
has adapted a number of Nancarrow's player piano studies for the Bang on a Can All-Stars
to perform live.
The name Nancarrow is of Cornish
origin meaning "valley of the deer".
described the music of Conlon Nancarrow as "the greatest discovery since Webern
and Ives
...something great and important for all music history! His music is so utterly original, enjoyable, perfectly constructed, but at the same time emotional...for me it's the best music of any composer living today."
Some of his Studies for Player Piano have also been arranged for musicians to play. In 1995, composer and critic Kyle Gann
published a full-length study of Nancarrow's output, The Music of Conlon Nancarrow (Cambridge University Press, 1995, 303 pp.). Jürgen Hocker, another Nancarrow specialist, published Begegnungen mit Nancarrow (neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Schott Musik International, Mainz 2002, 284 pp.)
1750 Arch Records (recorded 1977) produced by Charles Amirkhanian and originally released on 4 LPs between 1977 and 1984. These are the only available recordings using Nancarrow's original instruments: two 1927 Ampico player pianos, one with metal-covered felt hammers and the other with leather strips on the hammers, representing the most faithful reproduction of what Nancarrow heard in his own studio.
Nancarrow's entire output for player piano has been recorded and released on the German Wergo
label in 1989-1991.
In July 2008, Other Minds
Records released a newly remastered version of the 1750 Arch Records recordings on 4 CDs. http://otherminds.org/shop/Nancarrowstudies.html. The 4-CD set includes a 52-page booklet with the original liner notes by James Tenney, an essay by producer Charles Amirkhanian and 24 illustrations.
A recording of "Study #7", arranged for orchestra, was performed by the London Sinfonietta
and included on their 2006 CD Warp Works & Twentieth Century Masters
.
Nancarrow is best remembered for the pieces he wrote for the player piano
Player piano
A player piano is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in...
. He was one of the first composers to use musical instruments as mechanical machines, making them play far beyond human performance ability. He lived most of his life in relative isolation, not becoming widely known until the 1980s.
Biography
Nancarrow was born in Texarkana, ArkansasTexarkana, Arkansas
As of the census of 2000, there were 26,448 people, 10,384 households, and 7,040 families residing in the city. The population density was 830.5 people per square mile . There were 11,721 housing units at an average density of 368.1 per square mile...
. He played trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
in a jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
band in his youth, before studying music first in Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
and later in Boston, Massachusetts with Roger Sessions
Roger Sessions
Roger Huntington Sessions was an American composer, critic, and teacher of music.-Life:Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendent of Samuel Huntington, a signer of...
, Walter Piston
Walter Piston
Walter Hamor Piston Jr., , was an American composer of classical music, music theorist and professor of music at Harvard University whose students included Leroy Anderson, Leonard Bernstein, and Elliott Carter....
and Nicolas Slonimsky
Nicolas Slonimsky
Nicolas Slonimsky was a Russian born American composer, conductor, musician, music critic, lexicographer and author. He described himself as a "diaskeuast" ; "a reviser or interpolator."- Life :...
. He met Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
during that composer's brief stay in Boston in 1933.
In Boston, Nancarrow joined the Communist Party
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
. When the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
broke out, he traveled to Spain to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
Abraham Lincoln Brigade
The Abraham Lincoln Brigade refers to volunteers from the United States who served in the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigades. They fought for Spanish Republican forces against Franco and the Spanish Nationalists....
in fighting against Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
. He was interned by the French at the Gurs internment camp in 1939. Upon his return to the United States in 1939, he learned that his Brigade colleagues were having trouble getting their U.S. passport
Passport
A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth....
s renewed. After spending some time in New York City, Nancarrow moved to Mexico in 1940 to escape this harassment.
He visited the USA briefly in 1947, but became a Mexican citizen in 1956. His next appearance in the USA was in San Francisco for the New Music America festival in 1981 and he traveled regularly in the following years. In 1985 he consulted a lawyer about the possibility of returning to his native country. He was told that he would have to sign a statement swearing that he had been "young and foolish" when he embraced Communism, which he refused to do. Consequently, he continued living in Las Águilas, Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
, until his death at age 84. Though he had a few friends among Mexican composers, he was largely ignored by the Mexican musical establishment.
Nevertheless, it was in Mexico that Nancarrow did the work he is best known for today. He had already written some music in the United States, but the extreme technical demands they made on players meant that satisfactory performances were very rare. That situation did not improve in Mexico's musical environment, also with few musicians available who could perform his works, so the need to find an alternative way of having his pieces performed became even more pressing. Taking a suggestion from Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...
's book New Musical Resources, which he bought in New York in 1939, Nancarrow found the answer in the player piano
Player piano
A player piano is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in...
, with its ability to produce extremely complex rhythm
Rhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
ic patterns at a speed far beyond the abilities of humans.
Cowell had suggested that just as there is a scale of pitch frequencies, there might also be a scale of tempi. Nancarrow undertook to create music which would superimpose tempi in cogent pieces, and by his twenty-first composition for player piano, had begun "sliding" (increasing and decreasing) tempi within strata. (see: William Duckworth, Talking Music.) Nancarrow later said that if electronic
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
resources had been available to him at this time, he would have probably written music for them, but they were not.
Temporarily buoyed by an inheritance, Nancarrow traveled to New York City in 1947 and bought a custom-built manual punching machine to enable him to punch the piano roll
Piano roll
A piano roll is a music storage medium used to operate a player piano, piano player or reproducing piano. A piano roll is a continuous roll of paper with perforations punched into it. The peforations represent note control data...
s. The machine was an adaptation of one used in the commercial production of rolls, and using it was very hard work and very slow. He also adapted the player pianos, increasing their dynamic
Dynamics (music)
In music, dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but can also refer to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic or functional . The term is also applied to the written or printed musical notation used to indicate dynamics...
range by tinkering with their mechanism and covering the hammers with leather
Leather
Leather is a durable and flexible material created via the tanning of putrescible animal rawhide and skin, primarily cattlehide. It can be produced through different manufacturing processes, ranging from cottage industry to heavy industry.-Forms:...
(in one player piano) and metal (in the other) so as to produce a more percussive
Percussion instrument
A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...
sound. On this trip to New York he also met Cowell and heard a performance of John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
's Sonatas and Interludes
Sonatas and Interludes
Sonatas and Interludes is a collection of twenty pieces for prepared piano by American avant-garde composer John Cage . It was composed in 1946–1948, shortly after Cage's introduction to Indian philosophy and the teachings of art historian Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, both of which became major...
for prepared piano
Prepared piano
A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers....
(also influenced by Cowell's aesthetics), which would later lead to Nancarrow modestly experimenting with prepared piano in his Study #30.
Nancarrow's first pieces combined the harmonic
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
language and melodic
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
motifs
Motif (music)
In music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....
of early jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
pianists like Art Tatum
Art Tatum
Arthur "Art" Tatum, Jr. was an American jazz pianist and virtuoso who played with phenomenal facility despite being nearly blind.Tatum is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time...
with extraordinarily complicated metrical
Metre (music)
Meter or metre is a term that music has inherited from the rhythmic element of poetry where it means the number of lines in a verse, the number of syllables in each line and the arrangement of those syllables as long or short, accented or unaccented...
schemes. The first five rolls he made are called the Boogie-Woogie
Boogie-woogie
Boogie-woogie has the following meanings:*Boogie-woogie, a piano-based music style*Boogie-woogie , a swing dance or a dance that imitates the rock-n-roll dance of the 1950s*"Boogie Woogie" , a song by EuroGroove and Dannii Minogue...
Suite (later assigned the name Study No. 3 a-e). His later works were abstract, with no obvious references to any music apart from Nancarrow's.
Many of these later pieces (which he generally called studies
Étude
An étude , is an instrumental musical composition, most commonly of considerable difficulty, usually designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular technical skill. The tradition of writing études emerged in the early 19th century with the rapidly growing popularity of the piano...
) are canon
Canon (music)
In music, a canon is a contrapuntal composition that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration . The initial melody is called the leader , while the imitative melody, which is played in a different voice, is called the follower...
s in augmentation or diminution
Diminution
In Western music and music theory, diminution has four distinct meanings. Diminution may be a form of embellishment in which a long note is divided into a series of shorter, usually melodic, values...
or prolation canon
Prolation canon
In music, a prolation canon or mensuration canon is a type of canon, a musical composition wherein the main melody is accompanied by one or more imitations of that melody in other voices. Not only do the voices sing or play the same melody, they do so at different speeds...
s. While most canons using this device, such as those by Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
, have the tempo
Tempo
In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...
s of the various parts in quite simple ratios, like 2:1, Nancarrow's canons are in far more complicated ratios. The Study No. 40, for example, has its parts in the ratio e
E (mathematical constant)
The mathematical constant ' is the unique real number such that the value of the derivative of the function at the point is equal to 1. The function so defined is called the exponential function, and its inverse is the natural logarithm, or logarithm to base...
:pi
Pi
' is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter. is approximately equal to 3.14. Many formulae in mathematics, science, and engineering involve , which makes it one of the most important mathematical constants...
, while the Study No. 37 has twelve individual melodic lines, each one moving at a different tempo.
Having spent many years in obscurity, Nancarrow benefited from the 1969 release of an entire album of his work by Columbia Records as part of a brief flirtation of the label's classical division with modern avant-garde music.
In 1976-77, Peter Garland
Peter Garland
Peter Garland is a composer best known for publishing Soundings Press, one of the few sources of new music scores and articles while in print...
began publishing Nancarrow's scores in his Soundings journal, and Charles Amirkhanian
Charles Amirkhanian
Charles Amirkhanian is an American composer. He is a percussionist, sound poet, and radio producer of Armenian extraction. He is mostly known for his electroacoustic and text-sound music...
began releasing recordings of the player piano works on the 1750 Arch label - thus at age 65 Nancarrow started coming to wide public attention. He became better known in the 1980s, and was lauded as one of the most significant composers of the century. The composer György Ligeti
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...
called his music "the greatest discovery since Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
and Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
... the best of any composer living today".
In 1982 he received a MacArthur Award which paid him $300,000 over 5 years. This increased interest in his work prompted him to write for conventional instruments, and he composed several works for small ensembles.
The complete contents of Nancarrow's studio, including the player piano rolls, the instruments, the libraries, and other documents and objects, are now in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. The Germans Jürgen Hocker and Wolfgang Heisig are the current live performers of Nancarrow's rolls using similar acoustic instruments. Other performers of his works (often in arrangement for live musicians) include Thomas Adès
Thomas Adès
Thomas Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor.-Biography:Adès studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and later composition with Robert Saxton at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London...
, Alarm Will Sound
Alarm Will Sound
Alarm Will Sound is a 20-member chamber orchestra that focuses on recordings and performances of contemporary music. Its performances have been described as "equal parts exuberance, nonchalance, and virtuosity" by the Financial Times and as "a triumph of ensemble playing" by the San Francisco...
and ensemble Calefax from the Netherlands who also recorded the Studies for player piano, already called 'Best CD of 2009' by Dutch newspaper Het Parool
Het Parool
Het Parool is an Amsterdam-based daily newspaper. It was founded as a resistance paper during World War II by Frans Van Heuven Goedhart and Jaap Nunes Vaz...
. American clarinetist and composer Evan Ziporyn
Evan Ziporyn
Evan Ziporyn is an American composer of post-minimalist music and music for Balinese gamelans. He plays the clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone, and metallophone, borrowing from classical music, avant-garde, and jazz...
has adapted a number of Nancarrow's player piano studies for the Bang on a Can All-Stars
Bang on a Can
Bang on a Can is a multi-faceted classical music organization based in New York City. It was founded in 1987 by three American composers who remain its artistic directors: Julia Wolfe, David Lang, and Michael Gordon...
to perform live.
The name Nancarrow is of Cornish
Cornish people
The Cornish are a people associated with Cornwall, a county and Duchy in the south-west of the United Kingdom that is seen in some respects as distinct from England, having more in common with the other Celtic parts of the United Kingdom such as Wales, as well as with other Celtic nations in Europe...
origin meaning "valley of the deer".
Reception
Composer György LigetiGyörgy Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...
described the music of Conlon Nancarrow as "the greatest discovery since Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
and Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
...something great and important for all music history! His music is so utterly original, enjoyable, perfectly constructed, but at the same time emotional...for me it's the best music of any composer living today."
Some of his Studies for Player Piano have also been arranged for musicians to play. In 1995, composer and critic Kyle Gann
Kyle Gann
Kyle Eugene Gann is an American professor of music, critic and composer born in Dallas, Texas. As a critic for The Village Voice and other publications he has been a supporter of progressive music including such Downtown movements as postminimalism and totalism.- As composer :As a composer his...
published a full-length study of Nancarrow's output, The Music of Conlon Nancarrow (Cambridge University Press, 1995, 303 pp.). Jürgen Hocker, another Nancarrow specialist, published Begegnungen mit Nancarrow (neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Schott Musik International, Mainz 2002, 284 pp.)
List of works
- Note: For a detailed listing of the Player piano studies, see: Kyle Gann's "Conlon Nancarrow: Annotated List of Works".
- Note: For an updated list (Jan 2008) of ALL the works, arrangements and editions included, see: Monika Fürst- Heidtmann "Dated and commented list of the works, premieres and arrangements of the music of Conlon Nancarrow".
Player piano
- Studies #1–30, (1948–1960) (#30 for prepared player piano)
- Studies #31–37, #40–51, (1965–1992) (#38 and #39 renumbered as #43 and #48)
- For Yoko (1990 )
- Contraption #1 for computer-driven prepared piano (1993)
Piano
- Blues (1935)
- Prelude (1935)
- Sonatina (1941)
- 3 Two-Part Studies (1940s)
- Tango? (1983)
- 3 Canons for Ursula (1989)
Chamber
- Sarabande and Scherzo for oboe, bassoon and piano (1930)
- Toccata for violin and piano (1935)
- Septet (1940)
- Trio for clarinet, bassoon and piano, #1, (1942)
- String Quartet #1 (1945)
- String Quartet #2 (late 1940s) incomplete
- String Quartet #3 (1987)
- Trio for clarinet, bassoon and piano, #2 (1991)
- Player Piano Study #34 arranged for string trio
Orchestral
- Piece #1 for small orchestra (1943)
- Piece #2 for small orchestra (1985)
- Studio for Orchestra, canon 4:5:6, (1990–91), Original C.N. orchestration: 3fl., 3ob., 3Bb cl., 2bsn., 3 F.Hrn., 3 trp., 3tbn., Tuba, 2Vib., Xil., Mar., one computer-controlled piano, Pf., 6 vln., 2vc., 3 db. In two movements. Based on the Study 49 a-c.
Recordings
Columbia Records MS 7222 (released 1969, deleted 1973) Studies Nos. 2, 7, 8, 10, 12, 15, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 33. Recorded at the composer's studio under his supervision. Includes the original version of Study #10.1750 Arch Records (recorded 1977) produced by Charles Amirkhanian and originally released on 4 LPs between 1977 and 1984. These are the only available recordings using Nancarrow's original instruments: two 1927 Ampico player pianos, one with metal-covered felt hammers and the other with leather strips on the hammers, representing the most faithful reproduction of what Nancarrow heard in his own studio.
Nancarrow's entire output for player piano has been recorded and released on the German Wergo
WERGO
WERGO is a German record label focusing on contemporary classical music. It was founded in 1962 by the art historian Werner Goldschmidt and the musicologist Helmut Kirchmayer and is currently based in Mainz, Germany....
label in 1989-1991.
In July 2008, Other Minds
Other Minds
Other Minds is a San Francisco based private 501 not-for-profit organization, founded in 1992 by Charles Amirkhanian and Jim Newman...
Records released a newly remastered version of the 1750 Arch Records recordings on 4 CDs. http://otherminds.org/shop/Nancarrowstudies.html. The 4-CD set includes a 52-page booklet with the original liner notes by James Tenney, an essay by producer Charles Amirkhanian and 24 illustrations.
A recording of "Study #7", arranged for orchestra, was performed by the London Sinfonietta
London Sinfonietta
The London Sinfonietta is an English chamber orchestra founded in 1968 and based in London. The ensemble specialises in contemporary music and works across a wide range of genres, performing modern classics alongside world premieres, and includes music by electronica artists as well as folk and...
and included on their 2006 CD Warp Works & Twentieth Century Masters
Warp Works & Twentieth Century Masters
Warp Works & Twentieth Century Masters is a 2-CD set consisting of live performances by the London Sinfonietta, released by Warp Records in 2006...
.
External links
- portrait, interviews and complete annotated list of Nancarrow's works, including first performances and arrangements compiled by Monika Fürst-Heidtmann
- CompositionToday - Conlon Nancarrow article and review of works
- Composer & musicologist Kyle Gann's Nancarrow Page Gann, author of "The Music of Conlon Nancarrow", is one of the current authorities on the composer's work.
- Hocker's Life and Work of Conlon Nancarrow. Invaluable information, photos and letters, in German By Jurgen Hocker.
- Carlos Sandoval's site Specific information on Nancarrow's studio, music library (databased) and other very specific issues. Carlos SandovalCarlos SandovalCarlos Sandoval Mendoza Is a Mexican/German freelance composer and multimedia artist, mostly recognized for his work joining technology, nature and art.-Biography and Work:...
was Nancarrow´s assitant. - Children of Nancarrow, a documentary about the composers who have been influenced by Nancarrow
- Conlon Nancarrow interview by Bruce Duffie (1987)
- Nancarrow page at Other Minds
- Writings on Nancarrow
- Links to Nancarrow resources, centennial symposium, and concerts
Listening
- Lost Works: Last Works previously unissued works by Conlon Nancarrow
- Studies for Player Piano The original 1750 Arch recordings reissued
- Art of the States: Conlon Nancarrow many works by the composer
- Charles Amirkhanian interviews Conlon Nancarrow by telephone from his home in Mexico City 1991
- Conlon Nancarrow on KPFA's Ode To Gravity series from 1987, including interviews from Mexico City and New York by Charles Amirkhanian, recorded in 1977
- A Sense of Place: The Life and Work of Conlon Nancarrow (Helen Borten, writer/producer/narrator; 28 January 1994)
- Conlon Nancarrow: Otherworldly Compositions for Player Piano a radio article produced by Minnesota Public RadioMinnesota Public RadioMinnesota Public Radio , is the flagship National Public Radio member network for the state of Minnesota. With its three services, News & Information, Classical Music and The Current, MPR operates a 42-station regional radio network in the upper Midwest serving over 8 million people...
a few months after Nancarrow's death; several works are excerpted in the article itself, and several others can be found on the accompanying page