18 Facts About Conlon Nancarrow

Samuel Conlon Nancarrow was an American-Mexican composer who lived and worked in Mexico for most of his life.

Conlon Nancarrow lived most of his life in relative isolation and did not become widely known until the 1980s.

Conlon Nancarrow 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.

Conlon Nancarrow met Arnold Schoenberg during that composer's brief stay in Boston in 1933.

Conlon Nancarrow was interned by the French at the Gurs internment camp in 1939.

Conlon Nancarrow visited the United States briefly in 1947 and became a Mexican citizen in 1956.

Conlon Nancarrow traveled regularly in the following years and lived in the current Casa Estudio Conlon Nancarrow at Las Aguilas, Mexico City, until his death at 84.

Conlon Nancarrow was friends with some Mexican composers but was largely unknown in the local music establishment.

Conlon Nancarrow 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.

Conlon 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" tempi within strata.

Temporarily buoyed by an inheritance, Conlon Nancarrow traveled to New York City in 1947 and bought a custom-built manual punching machine to enable him to punch the piano rolls.

Conlon Nancarrow adapted the player pianos, increasing their dynamic range by tinkering with their mechanism and covering the hammers with leather and metal so as to produce a more 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, which would later lead to Conlon Nancarrow's modestly experimenting with prepared piano in his Study No 30.

Conlon Nancarrow was married to Annette Margolis.

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

Conlon Nancarrow's work has been seen as the analog predecessor to Black MIDI, a genre of electronic music.

Conlon Nancarrow was an early inspiration to the American computer scientist and composer Jaron Lanier.

In 1993, BMG released a CD of works by Conlon Nancarrow played by Ensemble Modern, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher.