Introduction to the MTO Nancarrow Symposium

Abstract

[1] This MTO Symposium on the Music of Conlon Nancarrow grew out of an online symposium held September 27-October 27, 2012 in honor of Nancarrow's centennial. From the start of the planning for the event, Daphne Leong (Program Committee Chair) and I hoped MTO would be a partner. We are very pleased now to present this collection of articles to the readers of MTO.(1) They represent the four main branches of current work on Nancarrow: arranging his music for performers, adapting it to contemporary technology, analyzing the scores, and researching his life history.[2] Half of the presenters in the symposium participated in two major international events honoring Nancarrow in 2012, first at the The Music of Conlon Nancarrow: Impossible Brilliance conference held in April at London's Southbank Centre. Dominic Murcott brought together an international group of Nancarrow experts including Charles Amirkhanian, Felix Meyer, Kyle Gann, Trimpin, Rex Lawson, Wolgang Heisig, and Yoko Sugiura-Nancarrow to discuss and perform Nancarrow's music. The complete Studies for player piano were played on an authentic instrument along with performances by the London Sinfonieta. In November most of the same group gathered for the Nancarrow at 100: A Centennial Celebration organized by Charles Amirkhanian in Berkeley, California along with Peter Garland, David "Mako" Nancarrow (son), and the Bugallo-Williams piano duo. This event will likely go down in history as the greatest gathering of Nancarrow cognoscenti. Audience members included Bob Shumaker (the engineer for Nancarrow's recordings), Mary Oppen (a longtime friend), Eva Soltes (Nancarrow's manager), and Luis Stephens (Nancarrow's stepson). Recordings of most of the events are available online due to the generosity of radiom.org.[3] Helena Bugallo and Amy Williams have achieved acclaim for their performances and two CDs of arrangements of works by Nancarrow. Bugallo's contributions as a Nancarrow scholar are represented in this issue in "Harmonic and Non-Harmonic Temporal Structures in Nancarrow's Study No. 47 for Player Piano," which includes a critical score and rhythmic analysis for a piece that has only previously been available on recordings.[4] Clifton Callender's "Performing the Irrational: Paul Usher's Arrangement of Nancarrow's Study No. 33" explores compositional, mathematical, and performance issues involved in the approximation of irrational rhythms. Callender concludes with a close study of the Arditti Quartet's remarkable performance of Study No. 33, in Usher's arrangement.[5] Dominic Murcott's "Tomorrow's Music on Yesterday's Machines" surveys the many ways the Studies have been presented in recordings, and explores the artistic and practical questions that arose while preparing the comprehensive series of concerts for the "Impossible Brilliance" festival. …