Sixty-four pages into his 1930 manifesto of rhythmic experimentation, New Musical Resources, the composer and music theorist Henry Cowell made a passing suggestion about how his more extravagant ideas might be realized: “Some of the rhythms developed through the present acoustical investigation could not be played by any living performer; but these highly engrossing rhythmical complexes could easily be cut on a player piano roll.”1 As far as we know, only one man took him up on the proposal, an expat American card-carrying communist jazz trumpeter and polyrhythmic prodigy named Conlon Nancarrow. But this man made it his life’s work. Nancarrow’s early years are summarized in a laconic biography from the January 1938 edition of New Music: “Born 1912, Texarkana, Arkansas. Studied at Cincinnati Conservatory for two years. Worked way to Europe in 1936. No job since return. Went to Spain to help fight Fascism.” “There is nothing to do but hope for his safe return,” wrote a sympathetic Aaron Copland at the time.
more from Jeff Dolven at Cabinet here.