LCMF
x
Wigmore Hall

20 November 2025
THE ARTIST IS NOT PRESENT
Wigmore Hall

Conlon Nancarrow
Studies for Player Piano (1948-1970)
Nos 3a, 20, 25

W.A. Mozart (attrib.)
Instructions for the composition of as many waltzes as one desires with two dice, without understanding anything about music or composition (1792)

C.P.E. Bach
A method for making six bars of double counterpoint at the octave without knowing the rules (1757)

Antonio Calegari
Game of Pythagorean Music (1801)

Eyleif Mullen-White
At the Academy of Projectors (1972)
(world premiere)

Hanne Darboven
Opus 17a (1984)
(world premiere version for drum kit)

INTERVAL

Conlon Nancarrow
Studies for Player Piano (1948-1970)
Nos 12 and 36

Caoimhín Breathnach
Breathnóir (2007)
(world premiere)

Jennifer Walshe
Slop Studies 2#a-7 (2025)
(world premiere)(LCMF/Wigmore Hall co-commission)

Clarence Barlow
Im Januar am Nil (1981-84)

Artists:
Explore Ensemble
Jennifer Walshe voice
George Barton drums
Dominic Murcott player piano

Read our preview feature in the Financial Times

The London Contemporary Music Festival returns to the Wigmore Hall with a programme that charts the way composers have engaged with AI-adjacent ideas over the centuries. Moving from the age of Mozart to the modern day, we show how startling, amusing and even moving music can be when composers reject the ego and embrace the algorithmic.

Explore Ensemble and percussionist George Barton will showcase the extraordinary work of two cult figures from the world of computational music: Im Januar am Nil (1981-84) by composer Clarence Barlow (1945-2023) and Opus 17a (1984), in a new version for drum kit, by the artist Hanne Darboven (1941-2009).

Composer Dominic Murcott will present several wild contrapuntal works from the 1940s-1970s for player piano by the great Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997) (on a replica of Nancarrow's own player piano).

And Jennifer Walshe (b.1974) will return with a new commission for voice and ensemble, Slop Studies 2#a-7, plus works by two mysterious Irish composers Eyleif Mullen-White (1937-1988) and Caoimhín Breathnach (1934-2009), both algorithmic pioneers.

We begin, however, with W.A Mozart (1756-1791), C.P.E. Bach (1714-1788) and Antonio Calegari (1757-1828), presenting an extremely rare outing of a selection of Musikalisches Würfelspiele (Musical Dice-Games), early examples of procedural composition that took the Enlightenment by storm.