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[1.1] Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997) authored the largest and most original body of work ever written for the player piano. His interest in this unusual medium was rooted in childhood memories: "We had a player piano in the house when I was a child, and I was fascinated by this thing that would play all these fantastic things by itself. And so from then I had this way in the back of my mind-I wasn't thinking of composing at that age, of course, but it fascinated me" (Gagne and Caras 1982, 292). The idea of using the instrument to compose came indeed much later. In 1939, Nancarrow read Henry Cowell's New Musical Resources-a book that would prove tremendously influential for his future as a composer (Cowell 1930). In this highly imaginative and prophetic treatise, Cowell discusses both rhythmic and pitch relationships in terms of harmonic ratios. In an attempt to expand rhythmic usages-which he presents as markedly underdeveloped in Western European music in comparison to harmony and counterpoint-he discusses and demonstrates several simultaneous temporal subdivisions applied at the beat, measure, and tempo levels, and even proposes a new notational system for his novel "rhythmic harmonies."(1) Furthermore, he suggests the player piano as an ideal medium for realizing some of the resulting rhythmic configurations: "Some of the rhythms developed through the present acoustical investigation could not be played by any living performer; but these highly engrossing rhythmical complexes could easily be cut on a player-piano roll" (Cowell 1930, 64-65). The fundamental ideas of the treatise made a deep and long-lasting impression on Nancarrow. Half a century after his first encounter with the book, he asserted: "New Musical Resources is probably the most influence [sic] of anything I've ever read in music. In fact, I just reread it [. . .] [T]here are still a lot of ideas in there that haven't been carried out" (Gann 1995, 43). Nancarrow embraced, and applied in his own way, many of the book's concepts, particularly those on rhythm. Ultimately, it was Cowell's casual remark about the player piano's capabilities-and Nancarrow's reaction to it-that allowed the bridge between theory and practice to materialize.[1.2] Nancarrow emigrated for political reasons from his native USA to Mexico in 1940. Discouraged by several negative experiences with performers, he turned to the player piano later that decade. The medium was well fitted for the type of rhythm and speed challenges already posed by his music. It also stood as a plausible escape from the dependence on interpreters and their limitations. In 1947, after receiving a small family inheritance, he traveled to New York searching for his first player piano and punching machine (Gann 1995, 43).(2) Finding a punching machine was not easy, and the composer finally hired a metal worker to copy a manual model that he borrowed from the roll company QRS, then based in the Bronx. Back in Mexico, he experimented with the new medium. Initially, he was interested in using a player piano to control a mechanical percussion orchestra. The project never succeeded, but it took much of the composer's energies in the late 1940s and early 1950s. By the time Nancarrow abandoned this project, his series of Studies had already begun.[1.3] Nancarrow's exclusive dedication to the player piano, between 1948 and 1984, resulted in a collection of over fifty Studies, some of them with several movements. As the numbers of the Studies rose, the music grew more sophisticated and idiomatic for the mechanical medium. In 1989, Nancarrow said: "The first fifteen or twenty studies were just feeling my way [. . .] while learning what those player pianos could do: how fast they could repeat a note and how many notes they could hold down at one time. A hundred different things, which took some time to get used to" (Duckworth 1995, 46). His work developed with the medium and became, after a certain point, inseparable from it. …

HarmonicandNon-HarmonicTemporal Structures in Nancarrow’s Study No. 47 for Player Piano