Something for James Tenney’s Spectral Cannon for Conlon Nancarrow
2018. Fixed media. Laptop running Sibelius Notation software (version 8.0 or higher)
Premiered at Tenor Notation Conference 2018
Program Note:
Something For James Tenney’s Spectral Cannon for Conlon Nancarrow draws its material from 3 main sources.
The first is a spectral analysis of the late composer James Tenney’s voice, as he says the phrase “ Hello, my name is James Tenney.” This analysis was converted into MIDI and then used as a palette from which the piece’s notes and chords were chosen.
The second source is James Tenney’s piece Spectral Canon for Conlon Nancarrow,
a work for player piano inspired by the ouevre of American composer Conlon Nancarrow. Something... borrows structural elements from this work. More specifically, it transforms elements of Tenney’s voice using some of Tenney’s compositional strategies.
The third source is the body of work of composer Conlon Nancarrow, to whom Tenney’s piece is dedicated. Nancarrow was most known for writing works for player piano that could not be played by human performers. As an homage to him, Something... cannot be performed by either humans or player pianos, but rather only by a digital piano simulator found in the notation software Sibelius. The work explores sounds and musical textures that only MIDI instruments can create.
*This work is part of a larger series of works for Notation Software and MIDI instruments.