Artigo Revisado por pares

Nancarrow's Canons: Projections of Temporal and Formal Structures

2000; Perspectives of New Music; Volume: 38; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/833661

ISSN

2325-7180

Autores

Margaret E. Thomas,

Tópico(s)

Diverse Musicological Studies

Resumo

ARELY HAS A COMPOSER been devoted as persistently to the compositional technique of canon as Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997). Some three-quarters of his fifty-one Studies for player piano feature canons, often strict canons of two to twelve voices lasting the duration of the piece. The studies, which were composed from the late 1940s through the mid-1990s, are brief but remarkably complex and compelling works. Despite their shared canonic organization they exhibit a wide range of rhythmic, textural, and formal structures. In a few instances Nancarrow's canons are traditional, in that the entrances and endings of the participating layers are staggered, and the layers proceed at the same tempo.1 More commonly, however, the layers proceed at different, proportionally related speeds, in what are known as tempo-proportion canons. Nancarrow, for whom time is the last frontier of music,2 found

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