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Around 1993-94
Conlon told me about a commission
from Mrs. Betty Freeman to compose a piece for the Los
Angeles Philharmonic and asked me if I could assist him to do it. We
made an appointment to meet at his weekend-house in Cuautla City and
there he showed me copies of the 49-B and 49-C (punching and final
scores) and told me: "I will write the instrumentation on either of these scores. You will have to make the
transcriptions for the orchestra." He really meant: I had to
design the score as a whole, after his instrumentation,
resolve all the rhythm in order to be playable by orchestra
musicians, and make a
final copy. Also: coordinate the
"impossible parts" with Trimpin, who had his MIDI versions of the
study ready for this project. It was urgent and he couldn't do it
alone since he was recovering from a brain
stroke.
Some time later Conlon gave me the scores with his annotations and told me (I recall by memory) "You could show me results each week... this, despite of your occupations in my studio". Of course I started working hard inmediately in my studio in Cuernavaca City. The piece was scored for orchestra "a tres" (violin 2 and viola excluded): 3flutes., 3oboes., 3Cl., 1 Bass cl., 2Bsn., 3Fh, 3,Trp., 3tbn., percussion (2 vib., 2 xil., 1mar.) 1 computer controlled piano, piano, 6vl, 3vc., 3db. I resolved the 4:5:6 polytempo ratio with a simple 4/4 common-time, using several kinds of tuplets and some crasy multi-bar "15-istead-of-16-quarter, or an even worst "25-instead-of-26-quarter", certainly not suitable for orchestra musicians and not precisely the best solution in general. I say this now in retrospective, of course. Thomas Adès found later a much better solution: the use of two conductors.
Some other stories: the final score was stolen from my car and found intact three days later in an abandoned house. (Difficult days, those three days!) Also: some parts for the computer-controlled piano had to be re-written and re-sequenced: we didn't know the Yamaka Disklavier could not handle more than 16 notes at a time.
By doing this transcription I tried to solve a concrete, difficult "Gordian knot" in stressing circumstances and with little experience.
Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, refused to perform the piece. After some rejections from several conductors the piece was premiered by the New Juilliard Ensemble under Joel Sachs in New York, April 1995.
Published score: Schott "Conlon Nancarrow, Study in two Movements for orchestra" (Thomas Adés 1990-91) to be rented, not for sale.
By the way: I copied the notes from the 49B and 49C punching and final scores (and not piano Rolls as Schott states) into the orchestra staves following Conlon's orchestration instructions. |
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