With this second issue in the edition of Conlon Nancarrow’s Player Piano Studies, Dabringhaus & Grimm presents Studies 13 – 32. In the earlier Wergo release, it took five CDs, so I suppose we have three more Dabringhaus & Grimm releases to look forward to.

It is an exhilarative experience to listen to these new recordings of the Studies. I dwelled on the precautions that the company staff made to eliminate extraneous sounds already in my review of Volume 1 of this series, but I might add also their meticulous efforts in trying to recreate the exact tempi aimed at by Conlon Nancarrow. This isn’t a simple task, because on many of the rolls, the composer made no indications concerning the desired durations. In these cases the crew followed indications that Nancarrow had made during his concerts together with Jürgen Hocker. The Arch and Wergo recordings were also used for comparison, even though they sometimes adopted other durations than were agreed on for the Dabringhaus & Grimm series.

These are technical notes that may serve to validate the accuracy of the recordings, but that said, the rest is a feast for ear and mind, a deep pleasure at the sheer beauty of sound (better here than on the other recordings, for sure!), an almost blushing sensual pleasure at the mathematical and geometrical intricacy and perfection of the compositions, and a lasting sense of gratitude towards geniuses that set their mind to a cause and trudge along, no matter what. Conlon Nancarrow belongs to that rare breed, to which we can count also people like Karlheinz Stockhausen and Bob Dylan.

In the booklet, Jürgen Hocker supplies brief explanations of the make-up of all Studies on the CD. These explanations further bewilders the reader at the growing awareness of the complexity of these compositions, which also, each time you hear them, reveal new aspects of the intrinsic relationships between their various parts; between the punched holes, as they drift by through the mechanism! In a sense, Conlon Nancarrow’s Studies for Player Piano constitute a perfect merger of science and spiritualism, of steadfast scientific principles and a soaring, mystical beauty.

I will breeze through a few of the pieces on Volume 2 of Dabringhaus & Grimm’s Nancarrow series:

Hocker:

The first part at tempo 88 staggers along – a rhythmic but kind of jagged stagger! – in some blues thoughtfulness, down the line, in the shape of an old Chevy pick-up, while the second part at tempo 110 drives up like a speeding car on the highway, but a car with quite a different engine sound, as it appears at a pitch much higher. Despite their differences, Nancarrow’s punching forces them to stick together, and after a while I think the car analogy is not really adequate. It sounds more like a Giant of the Earth walking along, heavy-bodied, in his fresh garden of fruits, his head high up amongst the clouds, while a jolly bird twitters around his head, cracking all kinds of wise jokes! Gravity and its counter-measure!

Hocker:

The very beginning is kind of… “normal”, with a crisp frost morning walk along the path in the beech woods in the lower keyboard register, although the tracks show that the walk has veered from side to side – BUT, in a short moment, the second voice kicks in at top speed in the higher registers (not the very high ones); in fact moving so fast that the tones almost take on a pitch character, while the darker tones in the slower voice slowly pick up speed. It’s a confusing experience at first to try to make sense, but soon you can concentrate on one or the other of the two voices, one picking up, one slowing down – and becoming ever more focused – in a relaxed way focused – you may be able to really follow both voices simultaneously; a great illusionist happening! The music turns out like one of those images in which you can see two quite different pictures, for example that of a beautiful lady and that of a witch, depending on how your perception picks up the image; how the electric switches are turned on or off inside your head! At the same time, this is mathematics at PLAY! It could also be described as a Yin and Yang piece of music, where, all along, the main property of one voice always is found in some measure in the other one, until they merge in equality for a brief crossover in the middle and then exchange places, little by little! Conlon Nancarrow’s Player Piano Study No. 21 is a brain gymnastics piece! Stretch! (your perception!)

Hocker:

Again a mathematically conceived piece; quite “einfach”, quite simple, construction-wise – but the effect is grand, just like it was in Study 21. I can only imagine how much fun it must have been to measure and mark and punch, and then listen for the result, when Conlon Nancarrow experimented in his home in Mexico City!

This bit begins in the sleepwalking realms of the deep cellar subconscious realms, stooping forwards in slow, low-pitch registers, almost falling over, holding on to whatever stray shreds of sturdy existence are at hand down in that obscure dusk… but things are improving, and a second voice joins in higher tones, casting some light on the situation in another velocity. The third, middle-pitch voice also joins, and now things get blurry if you don’t watch it! The trick is to try to follow one of the three voices, allotting the other two a backdrop function, but as listening gets more familiar, it’s a good idea to jump tracks, i.e., try to focus on one of the other voices instead. Conlon Nancarrow’s music has a lot to do with the illusionist traits of perception, and no other composer has conceived this in quite the same fashion. When discussing illusionist music, at least I mostly think about the so-called Minimalists; Terry Riley and, in his earlier works, Steve Reich – but that form of illusionism is not achieved mathematically, as in the case of Nancarrow, but through lucky, almost incidental interferences that come into existence sporadically and as a glistening culmination of the art of keeping many things hovering slightly out of phase with each other, strictly played by ear, balancing, balancing... almost like a juggler juggling his balls or skittles or burning torches – whereas Nancarrow calculates his roll-paper holes positions meticulously, achieving his illusions scientifically. Come to think of it, composer Tom Johnson has a similar approach – if you’re generous in your comparison – in his pieces, but Johnson indeed – make no mistake! – occupies an area in contemporary music all his own, but more in the vein of Nancarrow’s scientific methods than Riley’s hovering dreamscape incidents.
You can envision the listening situation here like three conveyor belts – like the ones you have on large airports, but three instead of one, and all moving at slightly different speeds. You’re riding one of the belts, and then stepping over onto one of the others, and so forth, which means speeding up or slowing down a bit. It’s quite amusing and again, brain gymnastics!

It gets maddening as the voices accelerate simultaneously and at different rates, reaching a kind of crazy havoc, the voice accelerating the most culminating at a ridiculous speed. It’s not like this is going on all the way up to the mid-point of the piece, and then simply reversing. There is a restart once, and as the second go culminates at soaring speeds, the whole thing, with those two runs, decrease, eventually backing down into those dark and murky realms of subterra/ subconscious.

I guess you get the idea, so I chose to stop my account on these recordings made at Immanuelskirche in Wuppertal in June 2005 here, with the observation that the sound of these pieces is marvelous, reaching a clarity and richness never heard from these rolls before, without the slightest disturbance from the machinery or from the recording environment.

We’re waiting patiently for the coming issues in this series from Dabringhaus & Grimm.