[microsound] Re: nancarrow

[Richard Zvonar <zvonar@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 12:27 AM -0800 2/7/03, sroden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>actually nancarrow's music is quite beautiful, carefully composed (as
>opposed to calculated) and full of dynamics in relation to what he has to
>work with. certainly, the player piano does have limitations, but nancarrow
>spent his entire life working within those limitations to produce something
>quite unique in the history of classical composition - a life's work to be
>played by a machine. of course, the dynamics are not the same as a human
>interacting with a keyboard - but certainly dynamics were something he
>worked with, around, against, etc...

Nancarrow used "terraced" dynamics, in the fashion of Baroque music. 
His pianos were quite capable of continuous gradations of overall 
dynamics but he chose not to use this. (This information comes 
directly from Conlon himself).

Player pianos of the type owned by Nancarrow could be dynamically 
controlled in a global manner, using a special control track near an 
edge of the piano roll. As a result, individual notes of a chord 
could not be separately controlled.

Even with the availability of global dyamic control Nancarrow 
commonly chose to achieve dynamic effects through octave doublings. 
This was necessary when balancing individual parts against each 
other. A good example of this toward the end of "Canon X," where the 
upper voice has slowed down and the lower voice has sped up. 
Nancarrow balanced the sparse upper voice against the rapid ostinato 
of the lower by doubling in several octaves.
-- 

______________________________________________________________
Richard Zvonar, PhD
(818) 788-2202
http://www.zvonar.com
http://RZCybernetics.com

------------------------------