Conlon Nancarrow
October 27, 1912 - August 10, 1997born in Texarkana, AR, composed during the Contemporary period
Biography
Conlon Nancarrow was an iconoclastic American composer who wrote in an utterly new way using new instrumental resources. While isolated from the main currents of music, he was virtually ignored by the public and his colleagues until the 1970s. In the 1980s composer György Ligeti said Nancarrow was writing "the best music by any living composer." In his early years Nancarrow played jazz trumpet and enrolled in the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in 1929. He later relocated to Boston for private study with Nicolas Slonimsky, Walter Piston, and Roger Sessions. Nancarrow cites his study of counterpoint with Sessions as his most important formal training. He also studied Indian and African music with Henry Cowell in New York. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1937, Nancarrow joined the Lincoln Brigade, an organization of Americans fighting for the Loyalists against General Franco. Upon his return to the United States in 1939, the State Department confiscated his passport for "communist associations." Outraged and fearing persecution, he went to Mexico City, not returning to the States for the next 40 years. He took Mexican citizenship in 1956.
Nancarrow is primarily known for his 50 studies for player piano, which combine a quasi-improvisatory likening to jazz pianists Art Tatum and Earl Hines, with dazzling rhythmic complexity rendered at tempos that exceed the capabilities of human performers.
Selected Discography
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