We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.
/

about

Tenney was one of the first composers to actively champion the player-piano music of Conlon Nancarrow, and indeed, wrote the first extended critical study of Nancarrow’s work. However, “Music for Player Piano” preceded any real knowledge of Nancarrow’s music. In this piece, which is actually one short piece realized in four “orientations,” Tenney made use of the same types of computer-generated stochastic decision-making processes that were used in pieces like “Dialogue”, “Phases”, and so on. In the “Music for Player Piano”, the computer only specifies values for pitch, duration, and event density. The result of the computer’s compositional process was then punched onto a piano roll, to be played in four orientations: forward, backward (retrograde), upside-down (inversion), and upside-down and backwards (retrograde inversion). The order on this recording is: original, retrograde inversion, inversion, and retrograde, so that the piece is a palindrome, or mirror image of itself.

Technical note: This recording was made by John Oswald and Marvin Green in the early 1980s, in Toronto, using PCM digital recording technology. We are grateful to these two composers for allowing us to use their fine recording.

credits

from JAMES TENNEY: SELECTED WORKS 1961 – 1969 (ART 1007, 1992), released January 3, 1992
This recording was made by John Oswald and Marvin Green in the early 1980s, in Toronto, using PCM digital recording technology. We are grateful to these two composers for allowing us to use their fine recording.

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Artifact Recordings image

Artifact Recordings San Francisco, California

ARTIFACT RECORDINGS is a project of Ubu, Incorporated, an artist-run, non-profit organization supporting experimental and electronic music based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our download and compact disk series is dedicated to representing a living experimental music tradition that continues to thrive in the cracks between the commercial, academic and classical music establishments. ... more

contact / help

Contact Artifact Recordings

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this track or account

If you like Artifact Recordings, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Beans joins the show to discuss his album release, "ZWAARD".

listen now