George Crumb

GEORGE CRUMB

Born: October 24, 1929, Charleston, West Virginia

In his own words...

"In Ancient Voices of Children, as in earlier Lorca settings, I have

sought musical images that enhance and reinforce the powerful
yet strangely haunting imagery of Lorca's poetry. I feel that the
essential meaning of this poetry is concerned with the most primary things; Life
death, love, the smell of the earth, the sounds of the wind and the sea. These ur-
concepts are embodied in a language which is primitive and stark, but which is
capable of infinitely subtle nuance."

American composer and teacher. Crumb has developed a style that uses new
techniques in a dramatic, narrative manner.

George Crumb's career is rather typical for American composers in the second half of the
twentieth century. His training was largely in American universities (he received his
Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan). In turn, he has spent the
majority of his career teaching composition at various universities. He is now Professor
Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, where he began teaching in 1965. He has
received a number of awards (including a Pulitzer Prize in 1968 for his Echoes of Time
and the River), as well as numerous honorary degrees.

Crumb's music is a rich blend of new and innovative techniques, often involving aspects
of theater. His scores often call for unusual instrumental combinations. His Lux aeterna,
for example, adds a sitar to a chamber ensemble, and his Black Angels is written for an
amplified string quartet, which he calls on to play various percussion instruments as well
as bowing water goblets. In addition, he asks his players and singers to use new ways of
producing sounds. This is especially true of his vocal music. Here Crumb allows the singer
to turn her voice into a different kind of instrument, using clicks, sighs, laughs, and yells
to create dramatic effects (he also asks instrumentalists to speak, sing, or shout, often as
a part of playing). Other techniques, such as singing into the piano (to produce extra
resonance) or singing though a cardboard tube (to create a sense of physical and even
spiritual distance) add new tonal colors to the human voice. Many of his works were
written for the virtuoso singer Jan DeGaetani, and their collaborations have been a rich
source of new vocal technique.

Crumb's music also stands out for his use of theater. In Vox balanae he calls for the
musicians to wear masks and to perform under a blue light. In his pieces, musicians often
leave and reenter the stage, or play from offstage. The written scores also share this
sense of theater and symbolism—repetitive sections, for instance, might be written on a
circular staff—and his music is as visually intriguing as it is musically satisfying. The
majority of his vocal pieces are settings of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, and it

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 George Crumb

is in these pieces that he seems to have found his most successful and immediate style.
Not surprisingly, these are among his most often performed works.

Works:

● Orchestral music, including Echoes of Time and the River (1967) and A Haunted
Landscape (1984)
● Vocal music based on Lorca poetry, including Night Music I (1963); four books of
madrigals (1965–69); Songs, Drones, and Refrains of Death (1968); Night of the
Four Moons (1969); and Ancient Voices of Children (1970)
● Chamber music, including Black Angels (1970), for electrified string quartet; Lux
aeterna (Eternal Light, 1971), for voice and chamber ensemble (including sitar);
Vox balanae (The Voice of the Whales, 1971), for amplified instruments; and Quest
(1994), for guitar and chamber ensemble
● Music for amplified piano, including 2 volumes of Makrokosmos (1972,1973), Music
for a Summer Evening (1974), and Zeitgeist (1988); piano music (Processional,
1984)

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