Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Conlon Nancarrow: Interviews in Mexico City and San Francisco

1984; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 2; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3051655

1945-2349

Roger Reynolds,

Diverse Musicological Studies

The unique efforts of Conlon Nancarrow over the past forty years have resulted in a series of compositions for player pianos that have astonished and intrigued those who encountered them. Modestly entitled Studies, these works now number in the forties and continue to enter new musical terrain. Largely because of their striking rhythmic vitality-several very clearly defined musical lines moving with inexorable independence-they make an entirely novel impact on the ear. They stimulate the musical imagination strongly, in part, I believe, because of the very matter-of-factness with which they go about their business. Nothing is extraneous in Nancarrow's music. Nothing distracts one from confronting his primary intentions. Born in the United States (though now a citizen of Mexico), Nancarrow's early influences included experience as a jazz trumpet player, and it is perhaps in this circumstance that the origins of his fascination with the clashing of multiple, simultaneous tempos might be sought. His concern is explicit: temporal dissonance. All other aspects of musical control, pitch selection, gestural and articulative design, rhythmic detail, timbre and dynamics, are thought of as being in the service of tempo clarification. It is obvious that Nancarrow's engagement with simultaneous tempo relationships developed as a result of a solitary collaboration with his two specially prepared Ampico mechanical pianos. Although his earlier instrumental music makes certain rhythmic and metrical demands, it was not until the growth of his relationship with the player pianos-their unflappable precision in responding to the dictates of the punched paper rolls which he prepared-that the depth of his fascination with subtly interacting simultaneous tempos was manifested. Nancarrow is unaccustomed to talking about his work. It is only in the past few years that the earlier trickle of interested hunters who traced him to his studio in Mexico City grew to disruptive proportions. The interest in his work, originally