Furthermore, most of his studies were arranged for many different ensembles and instruments, including two pianos, small orchestra, string quartet, xylophone, vibraphone and celesta, synthesizers and computers.

The suite was first performed in Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes on 30 July 1962.

The first movement features a hasty boogie-woogie in which up to seven layers of melodic and rhythmic structures are superimposed.

The second movement features a blues, with a twelve-bar ostinato in the bass line which is repeated ten times.

It was published in New Music Edition, a quarterly of modern composition, in Los Angeles in October 1951.

2b, as it would lead to confusion), an extended version of the fourth movement of his 1945 Suite for Orchestra.

This extended version arranged for player piano was also composed in 1950 and was later included in the set decades later as an afterthought.

In these studies, Nancarrow explored the possibilities of polyrhythm, prolation canons and the usage of irrational numbers, such as the square root of two.

It was arranged for the ballet Crises, by Merce Cunningham and John Cage, and again for piano four-hands.

It is a study of repeated and rapid runs and chordal motifs, superimposed over two ostinato rhythmic and melodic lines in the bass at tempos 5:7.

6 has a rather bluesy style, with a tune on top of a quasi-ostinato bass line, which tempo ratios of 4:5:6, shifting back and forth every four notes along the whole movement.

According to American music scholar Kyle Gann, it is one of the few studies approaching the sonata form.

One of the most complex early compositions, the study features striking rhythmic pattern together with melodic lines.

8 is probably one of the most important early studies, because it features some of the most representative traits of Nancarrow's music: canons and continual tempo changes.

It has a blues melody and complex rhythmic patterns, given the continually changing time signature.

The whole cycle of canons was first performed in the Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes, on 30 July 1962.

The second voice begins when the first has gone 1/3 of its way, but it is played 1/3 faster, so it catches up and finishes together with the first part.

It features many "idiomatic" traits of the player piano: glissandos, arpeggios, lightning-fast zagged patterns and rapid sequences.

To serve as a guide for listeners, Nancarrow also added chords at regular intervals to provide a temporal orientation.

29 is the first piece in which Nancarrow tried to work on a prepared piano, in the style of John Cage.

Sometimes unofficially subtitled Cloud, it features a style that is very closely related to that of Iannis Xenakis and György Ligeti.

It has three differentiated parts, called "movements" by Kyle Gann, which follow a sequence of "fast-slow-fast".

38, was commissioned by Sterischer Herbst, for the ISCM World Music Days in Graz, on 31 October 1982, where it was indeed first performed.

All of them were composed between 1982 and 1983, and were first premiered on 30 January 1984, in Los Angeles, even though the shortened version was finished in 1986.

In the third movement, Nancarrow uses a technique first known to have been used by Henry Cowell, in which the piano makes a very fast glissando only sustaining a few notes of a chord.

An abandoned part of the study, later entitled 45d or Discard, is now under the protection of the Paul Sacher Stiftung.

47 is, in turn, a Canon 5/7 and the discarded finale from the Betty Freeman Suite, which was first performed as an individual study on 14 June 1997.

It is a transcription for player piano of the second movement of the Piece for Small Orchestra No.

[1][2][3] Nancarrow also created other similar compositions for player piano, including Para Yoko (Spanish: For Yoko), a pseudo-canon 4/5/6 dedicated to his wife, For Ligeti, dedicated to György Ligeti on his 65th birthday, and Contraption No.

Among Nancarrow's papers, up to five abandoned studies were found, all being reductions of other works for ensemble or orchestra.