The Music of Conlon Nancarrow

Study of Conlon Nancarrow, composer of the world's most rhythmically complex music.

Kyle Gann (Author)

9780521028073, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 November 2006

316 pages, 117 music examples
24.4 x 17 x 1.8 cm, 0.504 kg

'… excellent new title by Village Voice critic Kyle Gann, the first book on the composer and a compendious survey of his work.' Wire

The expatriate American experimentalist composer Conlon Nancarrow is increasingly recognized as having had one of the most innovative musical minds of the twentieth century. His music, almost all written for player piano, is the most rhythmically complex ever written, couched in intricate contrapuntal systems using up to twelve different tempi at the same time. Yet despite its complexity, Nancarrow's music drew its early influences from the jazz pianism of Art Tatum and Earl Hines and from the rhythms of Indian music; Nancarrow's whirlwinds of notes are joyously physical in their energy. Composed in almost complete isolation from 1940, this music has achieved international fame only in the last few years. The author has discussed Nancarrow's music with him, and analyses sixty-five works, virtually the composer's complete output.

Preface
1. The music: general considerations
2. A biographical sketch
3. Foreshadowings: the early works
4. Blues years: the ostinato studies
5. Isorhythm: the numbers game
6. Canon: phase 1
7. Stretching time: the acceleration studies
8. Beyond counterpoint: the sound-mass canons
9. Synthesizing a language
10. After the player piano
Notes
Discography
Select bibliography
Scores
Index.

Subject Areas: Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups [AVH]