Multitemporal music
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Multitemporal Music is a way of composing and overlaying sound streams that have internal tempos different from each other. In other words, two parts of the same score could go at different speed. For example one could go at 115 bpm and one could go at 105 bpm, at the same time. Multitemporal music was first heard in US-Mexican composer Conlon Nancarrow 's work when was discovered by ungarian György Ligeti, a much more famous composer that undertook the task of bringing Nancarrow's music to the fore.
To overcome the limits posed by a human performer in playing a multitemporal score Nancarrow used two modified player-pianos, painstakingly punching the rolls hole by hole, by hand. One of the few recordings of this composer's work, that may well be considered one of the most innovative of this century, is found in Wergo's excellent "Studies for Player Piano' series.
The idea of layering more than one speed at the same time was then proposed by Iannis Xenakis in the early seventies, and more recently by Italian born composer Valerio Camporini Faggioni, which first defined this kind of music 'Multitemporal Music' and unware of Nancarrow's work went on producing a body of work in the multitemporal style. Having come to know Nancarrow's work he then paid a tribute to the late composer with track contained in 2001 "Split Your Cerebrum" (Unbearable Recordings).
However Valerio Camporini Faggioni's work doesn't rely on piano-players but on synthetic and software devices, especially the ones built by fellow Italian Guido Zen, of which we recall the Guidmachine and the Valevarion.
The software devices are now freely available on the web for anyone who wants to try first hand writing Multitemporal Music.
