Nancarrow Three Studies for Player Piano

 Day 193

Nancarrow - Three studies for player piano - no 8, 11 and 12

I'd heard some of the player piano studies of Conlon Nancarrow before but I had never listed to any of them properly. I chose these three purely at random. They are written for player piano because Nacarrow wanted to create music that was impossible for any human pianist to play because of the sheet speed, the rhythmic complexity or just the number of notes to be played at the same time.

I listened to these three performances (which I think were computer generated rather than performed on a player piano) with a score and that certainly helped understanding what was happening. To my surprise the basic material was not that unconventional -the music is broadly tonal and some of the basic musical shapes were fairly straightforward. Indeed study no 12 had some Spanish touches which would not have been out of place in Grenados or Ravel! What is far from straightforward, of course, it the way that this is all put together.. Nancarrow was very interested in contrapuntal textures and with the freedom that the player piano brought he was able to use all sort of techniques, including rhythmic displacement , multiple voices and simultaneous voices in different registers. The effect is quite mesmerising in short doses - these pieces each last 4-5 minutes - though I can imagine than playing several of them one after the other could leave your head buzzing. But I'd take this music every day over than of Sorabji (day 96)