Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997)

In recent months I've become a bit of a Nancarrow fan.

Conlon Nancarrow, one of the greatest, and strangest, composers of the 20th century, lived in isolation from the rest of the musical community in Mexico City. Starting in the 1940s, he composed music almost exclusively for the player piano. That is, he plotted his compositions directly onto the piano roll, in effect producing something very similar to computer music. Initially somewhat inspired by boogie woogie and jazz, these compositions became more and more complex. Only a few of them can, in somewhat simplified form, be played by humans.

Nancarrow remained an obscure composer until leading avantgarde composer Gyorgy Ligeti discovered him and started talking about Nancarrow as being the greatest composer of the 20th century.

"This music is the greatest discovery since Webern and Ives... something great and important for all music history! His music is so utterly original, enjoyable, perfectly constructed but at the same time emotional...for me it's the best of any composer living today." - Gyorgy Ligeti

There's an online article about him here.

This video features 8 minutes of Player piano music by Nancarrow:



Here's another slightly shorter video:



More info and links about Nancarrow at the Nancarrow Wiki page.