Don Satz:

>I've had little exposure to the music of Conlon Nancarrow and would like to
>change that.  I have two questions: how would you categorize his music,
>and what recordings would be a good starting point?

The RCA cd is alright, and includes arrangements of the player piano
works for conventional instruments.But the real fun is in the player
piano recordings themselves.  Nancarrow achieved an enormous variety and
complexity.  He had a jazz background, and some of his best work shows it
- there is one piece is a kind of infinitely many-voiced barrelhouse piano
- way more complex and contrapuntal than any real piano could aspire to.
Other pieces are polyphonic and almost Bach -like.  They are infinitely
inventive, unique, not at all hard to listen to, if you are up to the
complexity.  (They probably do wonders for your IQ!!) The sheer
inventiveness is what I remember best- in the same way that IMHO sheer
inventiveness characterizes Haydn.  I have a couple of player piano lps,
and haven't played them in a long time simply because I have gotten out
of the habit of playing my records.  But Don's inquiry will inspire me
to change that starting tonight.

Professor Bernard Chasan
Physics Department, Boston University