NANCARROW, CONLON  

Born in 1912 in Texarkana, Arkansas, Conlon Nancarrow studied in Boston with Nicolas Slonimsky, Walter Piston and Roger Sessions. In 1937 he joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, fighting for the republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Finding himself unwelcome on his return to America, he moved to Mexico City and eventually took Mexican citizenship while continuing his work as a pioneer American composer in the experimental tradition of Ives and Cowell.

Instrumental Music

Nancarrow experimented with various novel techniques, not least with the player-piano, in his efforts to separate himself from performers and to realise effects that were otherwise impossible. For this instrument he devised some 50 Rhythmic Studies. He was strongly influenced by his love of Bach and of jazz, and in his final years seemed to have come to terms again with performers who were now willing to deal with what he wrote.