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RE: Pachabels Canon/mechanical music
At 11:40 AM 10/8/99 -0400, Jim Bailey wrote:
>Has anyone else done things with "mechanical" loopers?
Gyorgy Ligeti (influenced by Conlon Nancarrow) has written several pieces for player piano and also for barrel organ. Ligeti said "Nancarrow's magnificent music for mechanical pianos prodded me to think up ways in which living interpreters could manage such complex polyrhythms."
In our "When not to loop" thread, many of us commented on difficulties in trying to synchronize non-MIDI ensemble performances; with this in mind, think of Ligeti's pieces for TWO player pianos! (He also wrote a piece for 100 metronomes, but that's another story altogether!) Several of these pieces may be heard on Vol. 5 (Mechanical Music) of the Sony set which is currently in progress to commemorate Ligeti's 75th birthday.
While the Ligeti pieces are not truly looped, they do share several features with looping; prominent repetition of parts which develop complex "illusory rhythms" and phase relationships a la Steve Reich, the possibility of exact playback as an accompaniment for live instrumental performance (as on Etude 14a), precise control of tempi and dynamics, etc. Also, the potential may exist for using this type of instrument as a sort of mechanical looper by splicing the ends of the punched rolls, which still wouldn't qualify as real-time looping but could be interesting nonetheless. Have any of you heard of this being done?
Tim
<
http://www.futurenet.com/classicalnet/reference/composers/ligeti.html>
and this one's interesting (andinteractive!) <http://www.illumin.co.uk/ligeti/main.html>
