tempered tempos

Of course it is Conlon Nancarrow - originally inspired by Henry Cowell's
New Musical Resouces - who has pursued the possibilities of tempi with
irrational relationships most thoroughly. If I recall correctly Study #33
has two voices in the relationship of the sq. rt. of two against two, and
Study #40 is based on the relationship of e to pi.. Another study is a
twelve voice canon and uses a whole number approximation of the the ratios
of 12tet. His studies with accelerating and decelerating voices might be
considered a special case of continuously variable tempi. Ron Kuivila's
''Canon Y'' (Lovely Records) is an extremely smart spin on Nancarrow's
famous Study 21 (''Canon X'').

Several works of David Feldman used continuously varying tempi and must be
learned by the player with the use of a prerecorded tape or sound file, as
the notation (timeace) would otherwise drag the player down.

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