Conlon Nancarrow (b. October 27, 1912, Texarkana - d. August 10, 1997, Mexi… Read Full Bio ↴Conlon Nancarrow (b. October 27, 1912, Texarkana - d. August 10, 1997, Mexico City) was an American-born composer who lived most of his life in Mexico. Nancarrow is remembered almost exclusively for the pieces he wrote for the player piano. He was one of the first composers to use musical instruments as mechanical machines, utilising their capacity to play complex polyrhythms at tempos far beyond human performance ability. Not becoming widely known until the 1980s, Nancarrow lived most of his life in complete isolation. Today, he is remembered as one of the most original and unusual composers of the 20th century.
Nancarrow was born in Texarkana, Arkansas. He played trumpet in a jazz band in his youth, before studying music in Boston with Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Nicolas Slonimsky.
A member of the Communist Party, Nancarrow travelled to Spain to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in their fight against Franco. After spending time in New York City in 1940, Nancarrow moved to Mexico to escape the harassment visited upon former Party members. It was in Mexico that Nancarrow did the work he is best known for today. Without the resources to perform his technically demanding pieces, he took a suggestion from Henry Cowell's book New Musical Resources, and turned to the player piano.
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. Nancarrow had a machine custom built to enable him to punch the piano rolls by hand. He also adapted the player pianos, increasing their dynamic range by tinkering with their mechanism, and covering the hammers with leather or metal to produce a more percussive sound. After hearing a performance of John Cage's music, he also experimented with a prepared piano. Nancarrow's first pieces combined the harmonic language and melodic motifs of early jazz pianists like Art Tatum with extraordinarily complicated metrical schemes. Many of these later pieces (which he generally called studies) are canons in augmentation or diminution or prolation canons.
Having spent many years in obscurity, Nancarrow's music was released in 1969 by Columbia Records. In the mid-70s, Peter Garland began publishing Nancarrow's scores in his Soundings journal, and Charles Amirkhanian began releasing recordings on his 1750 Arch label. He became better known in the 1980s, partly for his influence on György Ligeti. Ligeti called his music "the greatest discovery since Webern and Ives ... the best of any composer living today".
Nancarrow's entire output for player piano has been recorded and released on the German Wergo label. 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.
Nancarrow was born in Texarkana, Arkansas. He played trumpet in a jazz band in his youth, before studying music in Boston with Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Nicolas Slonimsky.
A member of the Communist Party, Nancarrow travelled to Spain to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in their fight against Franco. After spending time in New York City in 1940, Nancarrow moved to Mexico to escape the harassment visited upon former Party members. It was in Mexico that Nancarrow did the work he is best known for today. Without the resources to perform his technically demanding pieces, he took a suggestion from Henry Cowell's book New Musical Resources, and turned to the player piano.
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. Nancarrow had a machine custom built to enable him to punch the piano rolls by hand. He also adapted the player pianos, increasing their dynamic range by tinkering with their mechanism, and covering the hammers with leather or metal to produce a more percussive sound. After hearing a performance of John Cage's music, he also experimented with a prepared piano. Nancarrow's first pieces combined the harmonic language and melodic motifs of early jazz pianists like Art Tatum with extraordinarily complicated metrical schemes. Many of these later pieces (which he generally called studies) are canons in augmentation or diminution or prolation canons.
Having spent many years in obscurity, Nancarrow's music was released in 1969 by Columbia Records. In the mid-70s, Peter Garland began publishing Nancarrow's scores in his Soundings journal, and Charles Amirkhanian began releasing recordings on his 1750 Arch label. He became better known in the 1980s, partly for his influence on György Ligeti. Ligeti called his music "the greatest discovery since Webern and Ives ... the best of any composer living today".
Nancarrow's entire output for player piano has been recorded and released on the German Wergo label. 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.
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Study for Player Piano No. 3a
Conlon Nancarrow Lyrics
No lyrics text found for this track.
The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
@camstilton
Really quite confusing to read all the comments about this piece's impossibility. The player piano performs it with no trouble.
@Cracktaculus
There's the maintenance involved when you demand too much from a mechanical device.... The moral of the story is, better keep it greased if you want to keep spinnin' those crazy Mexican Nancarrow rolls 🥐🥐🥐🥐🥐🥐
@BryanBetts
that "left hand" bass line is just cookin'! thanks for posting the Nancarrow videos. not only are they entertaining, but quite informative and educational, too! thanks again!
@swinxmusik
He did! ;-) It's part of why he's such a great composer: he did with this instrument what only this instrument can do, while the usual usage of the Pianola (predecessor to today's sequencers) was just to lamely reproduce music originally written for piano players.
@plekkchand
Yes, a great composer. All composers are great. Everyone is great.
@swinxmusik
@plekkchand grumpy old man? 😀
@russellzauner
@@swinxmusik NICE lol bro thought he wasn't gonna feel the burn on an 11 year old comment.
well struck indeed
@kevinmitchell8650
It is written. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. God made us capable. Yet this is just a taste. Beautiful!!!
@charlesmoreac
Super vidéo avec la vision hypnotisante du piano !
@allamusica451
The composer has asked for the piano hammers to be modified to make the pitches less blended into each other (by producing a more percussive effect) and apparently it doesn't seem to be the case for this piano and that's why the "left hand" sounds so disastrous unfortunately.