CCCXXX. NANCARROW, Conlon: Study for Player Piano #26

CCCXXX. NANCARROW, Conlon (1912-1997)

Study for Player Piano #26 (1948-60)
(4:36)

This study is a canon in seven (octave-doubled) voices, each of which proceeds implacably, relentlessly, in whole notes. Their absolute regularity is only interrupted occasionally by one of two bars of rest, these rests coinciding, in all seven voices, at one point only, in measure 121. The first voice is heard alone for the first twelve bars, the other voices entering successively ... each voice is exactly 151 bars in duration, so they drop out in the reverse of the order in which they entered.

This piece is a study in polyphonic/textural perception. In the beginning -- and again at the end -- the integrity and continuity of individual voices is easily heard. By the time four or five voices have entered, however, the thickening texture becomes more and more difficult to hear polyphonically, becoming finally a compound-monophonic sequence of massive "block" chords, before returning to the polyphonic clarity of the beginning, as earlier voices drop out, one by one.