Library

Conlon Nancarrow

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Oxford Grove Music Encyclopedia:

Conlon Nancarrow

Top
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Music Encyclopedia

(b Texarkana, ar, 27 Oct 1912). Mexican composer of American origin. He studied with Slonimsky, Piston and Sessions in Boston (1933-6) and has lived in Mexico since 1940. From the late 1940s he has composed exclusively for player piano. His studies exploit the instrument's potential for rhythmic complexity and textural variety, creating showpieces of virtuosity far beyond a human performer's capabilities, with arpeggios, trills, glissandos, leaps, widely spaced chords and complex counterpoint. He is concerned with tempo, especially the ‘temporal dissonance’ of several rates occurring simultaneously, and with formal structure. His music first received serious attention only in the 1970s.


Gale Musician Profiles:

Nancarrow, Conlon

Top
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Musicians

Composer, trumpeter

Spending most of his career in Mexico City, Conlon Nancarrow worked in relative obscurity for several decades. The composer's work has enjoyed popular attention since the 1980s, however, with critics and audiences alike recognizing the significance of his 50 studies for player piano, as well as his other works. Because he composed mainly for an automated instrument, Nancarrow is also regarded by some as the founder of electronic music. Nancarrow died in 1997, but his work continues to receive popular and critical attention, with performers even offering various interpretations of complex pieces that he wrote specifically for the player piano.

Nancarrow was born on October 12, 1912, in Texarkana, Arkansas, where his father worked as an executive for Standard Oil and served as the town's mayor from 1925-30. He began taking piano lessons at the age of six, but soon switched to trumpet. He became interested in jazz, particularly the music of pianists Art Tatum and Earl Hines. In addition to music, Nancarrow demonstrated an early interest in politics, subscribing at the age of ten or eleven to an obscure series of pamphlets published by a member of the communist organization International Workers of the World. "I think I mainly got my education from those books. There were a lot of political things and I became quite interested very young," Conlon told William Duckworth in an interview published in the 1999 book Talking Music.

Nancarrow attended the Western Military Academy in Illinois and the prestigious Interlochen music camp in Michigan. Encouraged by his father, he enrolled briefly as an engineering student at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. Returning to music, he studied at the Cincinnati College Conservatory in 1929, but left the school after one semester. He continued to pursue music outside the academic system, however, and played in bands at local beer halls and other venues. By the mid-1930s Nancarrow had relocated to Boston. He was inspired by hearing a performance of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and soon turned his interests from performance to composition, studying with Nicolas Slonimsky, Walter Piston, and Roger Sessions. During this time, Nancarrow worked briefly as a conductor through the federal Works Progress Administration, but found he did not have the temperament for the position. "I had the musical knowledge, and I guess even my technique was alright, but I was too easygoing. In order to be a good conductor, you have to be a bit of a tyrant," he told the New York Times. Nancarrow continued to work for the WPA as a composer for the theater. He maintained his political interests in Boston as well, joining the Communist Party there and arranging a musical program for the organization.

Nancarrow picked up the trumpet again in 1936, playing with a dance band on a cruise ship bound for Europe. He returned to Europe the following year to serve as a soldier in the fight against General Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Upon his return to the United States he was refused a passport and, fearing further problems with the government due to his political activity, he moved to Mexico City. Nancarrow had married in 1932, but his wife divorced him while he was serving in Spain. He remarried in 1947, but divorced again four years later. He became a Mexican citizen in 1956.

Nancarrow brought with him to Mexico a copy of composer Henry Cowell's New Musical Resources, which he would cite many years later as an important influence. The book solidified his interest in rhythm over melody, and helped direct his interest toward the player piano, an instrument for which he would compose almost exclusively over the remainder of his career. "He talks in there about certain rhythmical problems," Nancarrow said of Cowell's book in the Duck-worth interview. "He says, 'Of course, it can be done on player piano.' But he never did it! Well, I did it." Nancarrow supported himself for a time as an English teacher and translator, while composing for piano and other conventional instruments. In 1947 he returned to the United States for the first time and, using money from a trust fund set up by his father, purchased a player piano and commissioned the building of a roll-punching machine. Nancarrow's interest in the auto-mated instrument stemmed from the complexity of his rhythms, which were sometimes too fast and intricate for musicians to play, and sometimes so complicated that musicians refused to play them. "Ever since I'd been writing music I was dreaming of getting rid of the performers," Nancarrow told producer Charles Amirkhanian in 1977, as quoted in a 1997 obituary in the London Independent.

In 1948 Nancarrow began what would become his life's work—the first group of an eventual 50 studies for player piano, composed directly on piano rolls. He continued the studies, generally regarded as too rhythmically layered and complex for musicians to play, through 1992. In 1960 composer John Cage used some of the studies in a score for a Merce Cunningham dance performance, Crisis, and Columbia released a dozen of the studies on album in 1969. Composer Peter Garland published several of the scores in Studies in Soundings in 1975. But the studies did not receive widespread recognition until the 1980s. He returned to the United States in 1982 to perform, to a standing ovation, at the 20th annual Cabrillo Festival in Aptos, California. That same year he was awarded a lucrative and prestigious inaugural Macarthur Award. Today, his piano studies are highly regarded by many. Writing in the London Independent, critic Phil Johnson called them "among the most compelling works of the 20th century." Composer Gyorgy Ligeti wrote of Nancarrow in a letter to Amirkhanian, cited in a 1981 New York Times article, "His music is so utterly original, enjoyable, perfectly constructed but at the same time emotional; for me it's the best of any composer living today!" Nancarrow's appeal extended beyond classical music circles. The avant-garde pop musician Frank Zappa proclaimed in a 1987 New York Times article, "In terms of individualism I think [Nancarrow] ranks up there with [Anton] Webern, Stravinsky, [Edgard] Varese, and [Arnold] Schoenberg. There's been nothing like him before or after." In 1993 the Wergo label released three albums containing five volumes of the studies, and issued all five volumes collectively in 2000.

A handful of adventurous pianists have transcribed some of the piano rolls into musical notation and performed some of the studies. Most notable among these are Robert MacGregor, Joanna MacGregor, and Ursula Oppens, for whom Nancarrow wrote the 1989 conventional piano piece 2 Canons for Ursula. Critics have noted a previously unrecognized warmth and dry wit that emerges when the studies are performed by musicians. Because he composed for an automated instrument, Nancarrow is regarded by some as the founder of electronic music. He dismissed that designation in a 1987 New York Times interview, but stated an affinity with electronic musicians. "If electronic music had existed when I started this whole thing of player pianos, I would have gone into that instead, because it would have been a lot simpler," he said. "The player piano is a tremendous amount of work, punching all those holes by hand, one by one, hundreds and thousands of them."

Nancarrow died on August 10, 1997, at his home in Mexico City, survived by his third wife, Yoko Seguira, a Japanese archaeologist, and a son. Ten years before his death, he told the New York Times that he found the growing recognition of his work pleasing. "All those years I had been working now have some point," he said. "There are so many artists and writers who are doing something they think is worthwhile, and it turns out to be junk. I thought that maybe mine was the same thing, but now I see it wasn't."

Selected discography
Nancarrow: Studies for Player Piano, Vols. 1 and 2, Wergo, 1993.
Nancarrow: Studies for Player Piano, Vols. 3 and 4, Wergo, 1993.
Nancarrow: Studies for Player Piano, Vol. 5, Wergo, 1993.
Nancarrow: Studies, BMG, 1993.
Studies for Player Piano, Vols. 1-5, Wergo, 1999.
Conlon Nancarrow: Lost Works, Last Works, Other Minds, 2000.

Selected compositions
Sarabande and Scherzo (oboe, bassoon, and piano), 1930.
Toccata (violin and piano), 1935.
Blues (piano), 1935.
Prelude (piano), 1935.
Septet (orchestra), 1940.
Sonatina (piano), 1941.
Trio no. 1 (clarinet, bassoon and piano), 1942.
String Quartet no. 1, 1945.
String Quartet no. 2, late 1940s.
Studies nos. 1-50 (player piano), 1948-92.
Tango? (piano), 1983.
Piece no. 2 (small orchestra), 1985.
String Quartet no. 3, 1987.
2 Canons for Ursula (piano), 1989.
For Yoko (player piano), 1990.
Trio no. 2 (oboe, bassoon, piano), 1991.
Contraption no. 1 (player piano), 1993.

 Sources
Books
Duckworth, William,Talking Music, DeCapo Press, 1999.

Periodicals
Independent (London, England), August 20, 1997; January 11, 2000.
New York Times, June 28, 1981; October 25, 1987; August 12, 1997.

Online
"Conlon Nancarrow," All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (June 29, 2005).
"(Samuel) Conlon Nancarrow," Grove Online, http://www.groveonline.com (June 29, 2005).
AMG AllMusic Guide to Classical Music :

Conlon Nancarrow

Top
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Classical Artists
Conlon Nancarrow
  • Genres: Chamber Music, Keyboard Music, Orchestral Music

Biography

Although he left a small body of work, American Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997) is remembered as one of the most influential and original composers of the late 20th century. Because the music he imagined was so difficult and so fast that it was beyond the ability of human performers, he created it for the player piano, punching the piano rolls by hand. His music involves canons with outrageously complex ratios and the possibility of many voices playing simultaneously at superhuman speed. In spite of the mathematical precision of his technique, his music sounds accessible, and often jazzy, making him a broadly popular composer. ~ Stephen Eddins, Rovi

Discography

Studies for Player Piano, Vols. 1-5

Buy this CD

Conlon Nancarrow: Lost Works, Last Works

Buy this CD 		     
Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Conlon Nancarrow

Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia

Conlon Nancarrow (October 27, 1912 – August 10, 1997) 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.

Contents

Biography

 This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2012)

Nancarrow was born in Texarkana, Arkansas. 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.[1][2] Upon his return to the United States in 1939, he learned that his Brigade colleagues were having trouble getting their U.S. passports renewed. After spending some time in New York City, Nancarrow moved to Mexico in 1940 to escape this harassment.

He visited the United States briefly in 1947 but became a Mexican citizen in 1956. His next appearance in the U.S. was in San Francisco for the New Music America festival in 1981. 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 rhythmic 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[when?] 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 rolls. 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 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 No. 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 canons in augmentation or diminution (i.e. prolation canons). While most canons using this device, such as those by Johann Sebastian Bach, have the tempos 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.

From left to right: György Ligeti, Lucas Ligeti, Mrs. György Ligeti, Conlon Nancarrow, and Michael Daugherty at the ISCM World Music Days in Graz, Austria, 1982

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, including György Ligeti.

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.[3] 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.[4]

Nancarrow was married to Annette Margolis (Margolis' grandson is writer Bret Stephens).[5][6]

Reception

Composer György Ligeti 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."[7]

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.)

List of works

  • Note: For a detailed listing of the Player piano studies, see: Kyle Gann's "Conlon Nancarrow: Annotated List of Works".[8]
  • 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".[9]

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) [10]
  • 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.[11]

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 label in 1989-1991.

In July 2008, Other Minds Records released a newly remastered version of the 1750 Arch Records recordings on 4 CDs. [12]. 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.

References

  1. ^ janet silver ghent (May 12, 2011). "Magnified musically: Obscure Holocaust prison camp inspires Stanford’s artist-in-residence". Jweekly. http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/61773/magnified-musically-obscure-holocaust-prison-camp-inspires-stanfords-artist/. Retrieved 14 May 2011. 
  2. ^ Hocker, Jürgen. "Chronology: Nancarrows Life and Work*1912-1997". http://www.nancarrow.de/chronology.htm. Retrieved 14 May 2011. 
  3. ^ "Calefax". Calefax.nl. http://www.calefax.nl/recensies_en.asp?id=4151. Retrieved 2012-04-30. 
  4. ^ [1][dead link]
  5. ^ "Conlon Nancarrow: A Chronology". Kylegann.com. 1997-08-10. http://www.kylegann.com/cnlife.html. Retrieved 2012-04-30. 
  6. ^ "Charles J. Stephens". Vvsaz.org. 2011-12-08. http://www.vvsaz.org/1003. Retrieved 2012-04-30. 
  7. ^ quoted in Kyle Gann (). The Music of Conlon Nancarrow, p.2. ISBN .
  8. ^ "Conlon Nancarrow: List of Works". Kylegann.com. http://www.kylegann.com/cnworks.html. Retrieved 2012-04-30. 
  9. ^ Conlon Nancarrow: list of Works by Monika Fürst-Heidtmann[dead link]
  10. ^ List of works from Gann, Kyle. "Nancarrow, (Samuel) Conlon" at Grove Music Online
  11. ^ "Recording of the piece". Personal archive, Carlos Sandoval. carlos-sandoval.de. http://www.carlos-sandoval.de/study_orchestra.htm. 
  12. ^ "Conlon Nancarrow's Studies for Player Piano". Otherminds.org. http://otherminds.org/shop/Nancarrowstudies.html. Retrieved 2012-04-30. 

External links

Listening


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Related answers

When was James conlon born? Read answer...
Who is spot conlon? Read answer...
What is the value of a 1992 conlon collection set? Read answer...
Who played conlons lawyer in the name of the father? Read answer...

Help us answer these

Is spot conlon died?
How tall was Spot conlon?
How old is shaun conlon?
What is the value of a conlon automatic ironer?

Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:

Copyrights:

Cite
Oxford Grove Music Encyclopedia The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved. Read more
Cite
Gale Musician Profiles Contemporary Musicians © 1989-2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
Cite
AMG AllMusic Guide to Classical Music Copyright © 2012 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Music Guide ®, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved. Read more
Cite
Wikipedia on Answers.com This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Conlon Nancarrow. Read more

Related answers

Who is john conlon?
What is James Conlon's birthday?
How old is James Conlon?
Do you think spot conlon is hot?
» More

Answer these

Who is aidan conlon?
Why was Spot Conlon named Spot?
Is Betsy nancarrow naturally ginger?
Is edward conlon married?
» more

Featured guides

» More

Mentioned in

Sound Forms for Piano (1995 Album by Various Artists)
Dan Deacon (Electronica Artist, 2000s)
Three Penitential Visions/Hidden Voices (1993 Album by Ingram Marshall)
Nana + Victorio (1993 Album by Peter Garland)
Shizuku (1999 Album by Yagi Michiyo)
» More