Begegnungen mit Conlon Nancarrow

'Nancarrow's music is the greatest discovery since Webern and Ives.'

György Ligeti

 

The American composer Conlon Nancarrow became famous for his complex compositions for player piano. In his Mexican exile he wrote an extremely original and at the same time emotional music which contributed to the further development of 20^th-century music, beyond twelve-note technique and serialism.

Jürgen Hocker accompanied Nancarrow in the last two decades of his life and now tells about Nancarrow's stages as a composer and about his personality.

The CD accompanying the book contains recordings of music by Nancarrow, some of them previously unreleased, as well as musico-historical recordings for mechanical pianos. With its combination of musicological work and biography, the present publication is aimed at both academics and a wide public interested in modern music.