Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997)
Orchestral, Chamber and Piano Music
The United States has spawned numerous composers so
original that they were initially rejected as eccentrics.
Among the best known are Charles Ives, Henry Cowell,
John Cage, and Lou Harrison. For many years, rumours
told of another such musician, Conlon Nancarrow.
Secluded in Mexico, he was said to be composing some
of the most explosive music of the century.
Born in 1912 in Texarkana, Arkansas, Nancarrow
attended the Cincinnati Conservatory (1929-1932) and
worked privately in Boston with three leaders of
American new music, Nicolas Slonimsky, Walter
Piston, and Roger Sessions. Nancarrow considered his
counterpoint studies with Sessions his only formal
compositional training. In 1937, after completing his
studies, Nancarrow joined the international fighters
gathering in Spain to combat Francisco Franco’s
military coup. Upon returning to the United States in
1939 and settling in New York, however, he found
himself treated by the American government as persona
non grata, because of his earlier communist sympathies.
When his application for a new passport was rejected,
he moved to Mexico City (1940), and eventually
became a Mexican citizen.
Nancarrow’s earliest mature works, fantastical,
energetic music, were inspired by his dual loves, Bach
and jazz. Yet despite his practical experience as a jazz
trumpeter, he soon began pursuing an ideal vision in
which practical considerations are secondary. For
example, at the optimal tempo of the wild, neo-baroque
Toccata for Violin and Piano (1935), the repeated notes
in the piano part are unplayable. Years later Nancarrow
realized his vision by constructing a player-piano
alternative for the piano part, which is used on this
recording.
Another early work, the Prelude and Blues (also
from 1935) fuses Bachian counterpoint with jazz and
blues. The blues permeates slow movements throughout
Nancarrow’s career, but never in a conventional way.
Here, tone clusters, unexpected accents and
asymmetries project his whimsical fantasy. Although
the Prelude and Blues was written for a soloist, the high
energy and textural intricacy of the Prelude has made its
performance as a piano duet more effective. The same is
true of the Sonatina (1941), a work in which the 29-
year-old composer achieved astonishing compositional
mastery. This successor to the exuberant sonatas of the
eighteenth century unites the spirit of jazz with the
European tradition. At the same time, the contrapuntal
wizardry, enormous range, and boisterousness make the
performers grateful for the four-hands version of Yvar
Mikhashoff, who consulted with the composer on
several transcriptions of his music.
Other compositions of the early 1940s available in
1991, when Continuum recorded this CD for Musical
Heritage Society, include a trio movement for clarinet,
bassoon, and piano (1942), a larger work in a popular
idiom, the Piece for Small Orchestra (1943), and the
1945 String Quartet. Uncovered after this CD was made
were two more movements of the Trio, a very early
Sarabande and Scherzo, Three Studies for piano, and a
Septet. That early String Quartet, his last “live” piece
for nearly four decades, hints at the direction he took
shortly, in which layering of rhythmic strata plays an
increasingly important rôle.
During the whole period in the United States,
Nancarrow was frustrated by performers’ unwillingness
to confront the challenges of his music. In Mexico City,
where there were even fewer musicians willing to tackle
complex new music, the situation was worse. After
unsuccessfully attempting to construct a mechanical
percussion ensemble to explore his rhythmic ideas, he
found a solution to his problems, the player piano.
Although impelled by his disillusionment with the
attitudes of contemporary performers, his interest in the
player piano was essentially positive: its unique sound
and capabilities, which had fascinated composers such
as Hindemith and Cowell, offered the chance for a new
kind of music. Purchasing the equipment he needed to
punch his own rolls, he began to pursue his contrapuntal
and rhythmic interests in an ideal form.
From the late 1940s until the end of his life
Nancarrow gave the parlour instrument a new life
through a compositional virtuosity probably never
dreamed of by its inventors. By rendering the live
performer superfluous, however, he removed his name
from the concert stage, limited the potential for
recognition, and obscured the existence of his earlier
works. Eventually, recordings and publication of some
of the player piano music, and a MacArthur Foundation
“genius” grant (1982), finally brought him to the
public’s attention. Then performers began to encourage
him to write “live” music again. Invited to major
European festivals, he gained an international following.
The player piano compositions, some fifty in all, are
rhythmic studies; like nineteenth-century Etudes, each
deals with a single compositional challenge. But the
fascinating structures of the Studies above all were a
vehicle for Nancarrow’s phenomenal vitality. While
cascades of notes whirl about the playerless keyboard at
speeds that dare our ears to comprehend what is
happening, these pieces retain a good-natured, humane
wit. Although most of the Studies remain out of reach
for live performers, one exception is Study No. 15,
transcribed for piano four-hands by Yvar Mikhashoff. It
is a canon in which the two parts perform the same
material at different tempos (in the ratio 4:3). Gradually
the faster, upper part pulls ahead. Then, when it has
finished its melody, it starts again at the slower tempo.
Eventually the lower part, originally the slower one,
completes its leisurely statement of the melody, begins
again at the fast tempo, and gradually catches up in this
canonic race. The two hit the finish line simultaneously.
In the early 1980s Nancarrow was persuaded to
write the stylized dance and variations ¿Tango? (1983)
for Mikhashoff’s International Tango Collection. Then
he agreed to compose a piece for Continuum’s 1986
Nancarrow retrospective at Lincoln Center, with a
commission from the Los Angeles patron Betty
Freeman. He modestly warned that the piece might be
small, but what emerged was his first large-scale
composition since the player piano pieces, the Piece
No. 2 for Small Orchestra (1986). Although compact,
this work is a major achievement, summarising the
essence of the Studies and opening the door to new
possibilities in live performance. Nancarrow has united
a tremendous range of moods and gestures within the
framework of temporal canons extending techniques
explored in his Studies. To the ear of the listener, the
ideas are instantly captivating: the complexities of
structure are only the means to an end, a work whose
parts fit snugly into a grand and colourful ‘whole’. The
piece is in two connected movements; the second begins
with the oboe solo following the climax of the piano and
double bass duo.
The commission and première of the Piece No. 2
catalyzed Nancarrow to restore his relationship with the
live performer. He then wrote another string quartet, a
trio, canonic piano pieces, and an orchestral work with
live player piano. Then severe illness put an end to his
creativity. He died in Mexico in 1997.
© 2005 Continuum