Works » By Title » P » Player Piano I (1977)

This composition suggests the polyphonic characteristics of linear sequences that tend to break or segregate into separate streams or channels. The relationship of one channel to the total group of channels is dependent upon attack quality, amplitude, rhythmic grouping, duration and register placement. Each passage is repeated a specified number of times, new passages introduce permutations of pitch collections slightly different or transposed from the previous ones. The rhythmic ideas surfaced from research I was doing with computer generated fragments of timbral sequences layered and displaced slightly out the phase with one another. JC

In this recording, Alcides Lanza plays the materials for all three pianos, having pre-recorded pianos I and II.