In my early years of writing music for Disklavier, I would occasionally attempt to write a tempo canon for the instrument, and always gave up within a few measures because it sounded too much like those of Conlon Nancarrow, whose music I had written a book about. Finally, while driving home on Oct. 10, 2025, I got a vision for what a non-Nancarrovian tempo canon could sound like, and even the tempo ratio leaped into my head: 28 against 29. I next thought about what would be the least convenient interval for pitch imitation, and a minor sixth dawned on me - inconvenient, because the more difficult the interval, the fewer decisions I would have available. And so in this canon, every note in the lower, slower "voice" is echoed seconds later - or, anticipated earlier, after the convergence point - at a tempo 29/28 as fast as the original.
Kyle Gann
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