Just back from a Friends of the Pianola Institute committee meeting where
we were told Conlon Nancarrow passed away in Mexico City last Sunday,
August 10th, aged 84. He was easily the best-known modern composer for
player piano.

Conlon Nancarrow only achieved notoriety in the last 15 years of his
life.  A jazzman, his views were sufficiently left-wing to make life
difficult in the USA of the 1940s, so he emigrated to Mexico City where
he lived for the rest of his life.

Interested in writing percussive piano music beyond the capabilities of
human performers, he had two Ampico upright pianos shipped from New York
and had a hand-operated roll punch, similar to a Leabarjan, made for him.
He once said he would ideally have liked to use player harpischords to
achieve the clarity he wanted, but had to make do with hardened hammers
on the Ampicos.

His pieces did not call for great subtlety in coding and he only used the
Ampico's seven intensities.  The music was instantly recognisable and
quite unique, sounding like two modern composers with different ideas, on
Benzedrine, playing on a single piano in a piano-bar.  Eventually the wit
of some of these pieces began to appeal to contemporary musical taste and
recordings, taken in Mexico City, became available.

He was eventually able to travel widely and, meeting real musicians, did
start composing chamber music for them in the last few years.  But he is
best known for the Ampico pieces, now only to be heard on the original
instruments in Switzerland:

>> The instruments of Nancarrow and his atelier and rolls are now in
>> the Paul-Sacher-foundation in Basel.  [Gerhard Dangel-Reese]

But some of the rolls have been copied by Play-Rite.

Dan Wilson