Conlon Nancarrow 1
Today, the first of two instalments about the American composer Conlon Nancarrow. For a long time, he was considered an eccentric, but now he is considered one of the most original composers of the 20th century. György Ligeti once described him as “The greatest discovery since Webern and Ives … the best of any composer living today.
Samuel Conlon Nancarrow was born in 1912 in Texarkana, Arkansas. In 1930 he entered the Cincinnati Conservatory to study trumpet, and in 1934 he moved to Boston to study composition with Walter Piston and Roger Sessions, among others. In 1934, he also joined the Communist Party. In 1936, he toured Europe as a jazz trumpeter and a year later he joined the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War to fight against Franco. In 1939, he returned to the US, severely wounded. Because of his membership in the Communist Party and his role in the Civil War, he decided to move to Mexico in 1940. In 1955, he became a Mexican citizen. He lived in Mexico until his death in 1997.
Nancarrow is best known for his Studies for Player Piano which he wrote between 1948 and 1992. He was one of the first composers to use self-playing musical instruments, mainly because his rhythmically and metrically extremely complex compositions could hardly be played by human hands. In this programme, you will hear a number of his Studies for Player Piano, as well as arrangements of them and other music for ‘ordinary’ instruments.
Playlist:
- Conlon Nancarrow: Sonatine (arr. for 2 pianos by Yvar Mykhashoff). Chirstina & Michelle Naughton
- Conlon Nancarrow: Study for Player Piano Nos. 3 a-e. Custom Altered 1927 Ampico Reproducing Piano
- Conlon Nancarrow: Studies for Player Piano Nos. 3b, c, d (arr. for reed quintet and piano by Raaf Hekkema). Calefax Reed Quintet; Ivo Janssen, piano
- Conlon Nancarrow: String quartet no. 3. Arditti Quartet
- Conlon Nancarrow: Tango? and Canon for Ursula 1. Ursula Oppens, piano
