From the 1940's onward, Conlon Nancarrow became the most accomplished practitioner of this polytempo technique, producing almost all of his compositions in the form of player-piano rolls. To achieve the required precise control of timings, Cowell suggested using the player-piano. He also proposed the use of simultaneous voices in different tempos, related by ratios. Cowell's book discusses Just Intonation, though only as an inspiration for building exotic equal-temperament chords. (The same technique Lou Harrison called "free-style Just Intonation".)Īround 1916, while Scott Joplin was making the last of his piano-roll recordings, Henry Cowell was beginning the work he would eventually publish as "New Musical Resources" in 1930. By "scaleless", I mean that instead of starting with a predetermined scale, pitches were freely chosen as needed to complete the desired just intervals at each point in the composition. I modified and combined the fragments in various ways, and re-expressed them in scaleless Just Intonation. These pieces were constructed from fragments of piano rags by Scott Joplin (and in some cases, Joplin in collaboration with Scott Hayden).
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