A woman sits at a piano and the world is at her fingertips. She may be on the verge of performing any one of thousands of pieces in innumerable styles. And new ones are being written every day. But regardless of her technical virtuosity, there are some songs she could never hope to play. They would require her to depress in unison combinations of notes that no human hands could reach — or race from note to note across the keyboard at speeds no human hands could attain. What is the sound of this secret music?
Conlon Narcarrow was born in 1912 in Texarkana, Arkansas, where his father was later elected mayor. Whatever interest he had in playing piano himself was destroyed by his childhood piano teacher, who he described as a “horrible old spinster.” But he took up the trumpet, became fascinated with jazz, and went on to study music in Cincinnati and Boston. He also became committed to radical politics and fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade against Franco in the Spanish Civil War.
Upon returning to the United States, Narcarrow was influenced by the theoretical work of Henry Cowell, who had become one of the most important avant-guard composers of his time (before being sent to San Quentin for having sex with teenage boys). Cowell had suggested that certain experimental rhythms could only be performed on a mechanical player piano. That idea set in motion decades of effort on Nancarrow’s part. But he pursued his dream abroad.
After being denied a passport because of his membership in the Communist party, Nancarrow renounced his American citizenship and resettled in Mexico City. There, he worked in isolation and obscurity, composing for player piano and punching the roles by hand. The results took music in a new direction:
Note that after 1 minute 21 seconds into the clip, you can view the keyboard in action.
As the years went by, Nancarrow’s experiments grew stranger and bolder. He
ultimately composed music that not even player pianos could reproduce because it violated the laws of physics. Nancarrow innovated in his personal life as well — amassing a library of over ten thousand volumes; marrying his third wife, a Japanese archeologist; and at age 58, becoming a first-time father (and primary caregiver as his wife was temporarily paralyzed after childbirth). By the time of his death in 1997, he had achieved broad recognition.
Nancarrow’s impact has continued to grow. His ideas have been expanded in recent years by “black MIDI” composers who use computer techniques to create compositions crammed with millions of notes (thereby rendering the page black in musical notation). Have a listen:
While the extent to which Nancarrow directly influenced “the blackers” is subject to debate, they travel at warp speed down the path he helped clear. His work, though hardly suited to all tastes, is a tribute to the power of imagination.