Editing Conlon Nancarrow (section)

==Biography==
{{more citations needed section|date=March 2012}}

===Early years===
Nancarrow was born in [[Texarkana, Arkansas]]. He played [[trumpet]] in a [[jazz]] band in his youth before studying music first in [[Cincinnati, Ohio]], and later in [[Boston, Massachusetts]], with [[Roger Sessions]], [[Walter Piston]] and [[Nicolas Slonimsky]].<ref name="Kozinn">{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/12/arts/conlon-nancarrow-dies-at-84-composed-for-the-player-piano.html |title=Conlon Nancarrow Dies at 84; Composed for the Player Piano |first=Allan |last=Kozinn |newspaper=New York Times |date=12 August 1997 |access-date=23 October 2013}}</ref> He met [[Arnold Schoenberg]] during that composer's brief stay in Boston in 1933.<ref>Gann, Kyle (2006). ''The Music of Conlon Nancarrow'', p.38. {{ISBN|978-0521028073}}.</ref>

In Boston, Nancarrow joined the [[Communist Party USA|Communist Party]]. When the [[Spanish Civil War]] broke out, he traveled to Spain to join the [[Abraham Lincoln Brigade]] in fighting against [[Francisco Franco]]. He was interned by the French at the [[Gurs internment camp]] in 1939.<ref>{{cite news|title=Magnified musically: Obscure Holocaust prison camp inspires Stanford's artist-in-residence|url=http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/61773/magnified-musically-obscure-holocaust-prison-camp-inspires-stanfords-artist/|publisher=Jweekly|access-date=14 May 2011|first=Janet Silver| last=Ghent|newspaper=J |date=12 May 2011}}</ref><ref name="hocker">{{cite web|last=Hocker|first=Jürgen|title=Chronology: Nancarrows Life and Work*1912–1997|url=http://www.nancarrow.de/chronology.htm|access-date=14 May 2011}}</ref> Upon his return to the United States in 1939, he learned that his Brigade colleagues were finding it difficult to renew their U.S. [[passport]]s. After spending some time in [[New York City]], Nancarrow moved in 1940 to Mexico, in order to escape similar harassment.<ref name="Kozinn" />

He visited the United States briefly in 1947 and became a Mexican citizen in 1956.<ref name="Kozinn" /><ref name="hocker" /> His next appearance in the U.S. was in San Francisco for the [[New Music America]] festival in 1981. He traveled regularly in the following years<ref name="hocker" /> and lived in the current Casa Estudio Conlon Nancarrow (designed by [[Juan O'Gorman]]) at Las Águilas, [[Mexico City]], until his death at 84. He was friends with some Mexican composers but was largely unknown in the local music establishment.

===As a composer===
It was in Mexico that Nancarrow did the work for which he is best known today. He had already written some music in the United States, but the extreme technical demands of his compositions required great proficiency in the performer, which resulted in there being only rare satisfactory performances. That situation did not improve in Mexico's musical environment. According to Annette Nancarrow's recollections, Nancarrow was frustrated by the "technical difficulties involved with two human hands playing his compositions on a piano," which he discussed with Arthur Gregor, a friend who was a school principal. After some exploration, they located a shop where Nancarrow was able to purchase a device that could create player piano rolls, and "worked with the owner to learn technical details, such as how to record loud and soft, and different types of notes, and improve the machine."<ref>https://www.nancarrow.de/Memories%20engl.htm</ref> Taking a suggestion from [[Henry Cowell]]'s book ''New Musical Resources'', which he bought in New York in 1939, Nancarrow found the answer in the [[player piano]], with its ability to produce extremely complex [[rhythm]]ic patterns at a speed far beyond the abilities of humans.

Cowell had suggested that just as there is a scale of pitch frequencies, there might also be a scale of tempi. Nancarrow undertook to create music which would superimpose tempi in cogent pieces and, by his twenty-first composition for player piano, he had begun "sliding" (increasing and decreasing) tempi within strata. (See [[William Duckworth (composer)|William Duckworth]], ''Talking Music''.) Nancarrow later said he had been interested in exploring [[electronic music|electronic]] resources but that the [[piano roll]]s ultimately gave him more temporal control over his music.<ref>{{cite web | title=An Interview with Conlon Nancarrow |publisher=Other Minds Archives | author= Charles Amirkhanian | date=April 28, 1977 | url= https://archives.otherminds.org/index.php/Detail/objects/5667 | access-date=Feb 15, 2024}}</ref>

Temporarily buoyed by an inheritance, Nancarrow traveled to New York City in 1947 and bought a custom-built manual punching machine to enable him to punch the piano rolls. The machine was an adaptation of one used in the commercial production of rolls, and using it was very hard work and very slow. He also adapted the player pianos, increasing their [[dynamics (music)|dynamic]] range by tinkering with their mechanism and covering the hammers with [[leather]] (in one player piano) and metal (in the other) so as to produce a more [[percussion instrument|percussive]] sound. On this trip to New York, he met Cowell and heard a performance of [[John Cage]]'s ''[[Sonatas and Interludes]]'' for [[prepared piano]] (also influenced by Cowell's aesthetics), which would later lead to Nancarrow's modestly experimenting with prepared piano in his Study No. 30.

Nancarrow's first pieces combined the [[harmony|harmonic]] language and [[melody|melodic]] [[motif (music)|motifs]] of early [[jazz]] pianists like [[Art Tatum]] with extraordinarily complicated [[Metre (music)|metrical]] schemes. The first five rolls he made are called the ''[[Boogie-Woogie]] Suite'' (later assigned the name ''[[Studies for Player Piano (Nancarrow)|Study No. 3 a-e]]''). His later works were abstract, with no obvious references to any music apart from his own.

Many of these later pieces (which he generally called ''[[etude|studies]]'') are [[canon (music)|canon]]s in [[augmentation (music)|augmentation]] or [[diminution]] (i.e. [[prolation canon]]s). While most canons using this device, such as those by [[Johann Sebastian Bach]], have the [[tempo]]s of the various parts in quite simple ratios, such as 2:1, Nancarrow's canons are in far more complicated ratios. The Study No. 40, for example, has its parts in the ratio ''[[e (mathematical constant)|e]]'':[[pi]], while the Study No. 37 has twelve individual melodic lines, each one moving at a different tempo.

Having spent many years in obscurity, Nancarrow benefited from the 1969 release of an entire album of his work by Columbia Records as part of a brief flirtation of the label's classical division with modern avant-garde music.
[[File:Michael Daugherty et al at ISCM World Music Days 1982.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|From left to right: [[György Ligeti]], [[Lukas Ligeti]], Vera Ligeti (György Ligeti's wife), Conlon Nancarrow, and [[Michael Daugherty]] at the [[International Society for Contemporary Music|ISCM World Music Days]] in [[Graz, Austria]], 1982]]

===Later life===
In 1976–77, [[Peter Garland (composer)|Peter Garland]] began publishing Nancarrow's scores in his ''Soundings'' journal, and [[Charles Amirkhanian]] began releasing recordings of the player piano works on the [[1750 Arch Records|1750 Arch]] label. Thus, at age 65, Nancarrow started coming to wide public attention. He became better known in the 1980s and was lauded by many, including [[György Ligeti]], as one of the most significant composers of the century.

In 1982, he received a [[MacArthur Fellowship|MacArthur Award]] which paid him $300,000 over 5 years. This increased interest in his work prompted him to write for conventional instruments, and he composed several works for small ensembles.

In 1987, a composer and instrument builder named Trimpin would work with Nancarrow to preserve his pieces in an early MIDI format using his piano roll reader. Then, from that data, the music could be converted into relevant mediums such as the cassette tape and the floppy disk.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Murphy |first1=Jim |last2=Trimpin |date=December 1, 2017 |title=Transcoding Nancarrow at the Dawn of the Age of MIDI: The Preservation and Use of Conlon Nancarrow's Player Piano Studies |url=https://direct.mit.edu/lmj/article/69461 |journal=Leonardo Music Journal |language=en |volume=27 |pages=33–34 |doi=10.1162/LMJ_a_01005 |issn=0961-1215|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

Nancarrow was married to [[:es:Annette Nancarrow|Annette Margolis Nancarrow]] (grandmother of the writer [[Bret Stephens]]).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.kylegann.com/cnlife.html |title=Conlon Nancarrow: A Chronology |publisher=Kylegann.com |date=1997-08-10 |access-date=2012-04-30}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.vvsaz.org/1003 |title=Charles J. Stephens |publisher=Vvsaz.org |date=2011-12-08 |access-date=2012-04-30 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120318212642/http://www.vvsaz.org/1003 |archive-date=2012-03-18 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nancarrow.de/annette_margolis.htm#English%20text |title=Annettes Memories relating to her life with Conlon |publisher=nancarrow.de |date=1991 |access-date=17 December 2014}}</ref>

On March 2, 1971, Nancarrow married Yoko Sugiura Yamamoto in Mexico City.

Nancarrow died in 1997<ref name="Kozinn" /> in Mexico City. The complete contents of his studio, including the player piano rolls, the instruments, the libraries, and other documents and objects, are now in the [[Paul Sacher]] Foundation in [[Basel]].