Die Kunst des Tempokanons

The CD 'Conlon Nancarrow – Martin Schlumpf: Die Kunst des Tempokanons' contains 14 arrangements of Studies for Player Piano by the American composer Conlon Nancarrow who died in 1997. The MIDI arrangements made by the Swiss musician Martin Schlumpf aim at elucidating and intensifying essential aspects of content of Nancarrow's original piano sounds by using a 'new instrumentation' via MIDI sounds generated by computer. Unlike other arrangements in which the player-rolls were taken as starting-point, Schlumpf used the written original sources (punched master copies and fair copies) as a basis, loading the musical skeleton of the studies (pitches and note durations) into the computer, so to speak. Thus, the path was clear for extensive elements of arrangement relating to tempo, dynamics, articulation, panoramic positioning and, most notably, to tone colour. The result is a fascinating new 'outfit' of Nancarrow's ground-breaking canonic studies.