Crumb is also a developer of extended instrumental and vocal technique. Crumb can be considered part of the timbralists and the timbralism movement his music usually fit in with the school of timbralists who modified existing acoustic instruments (if you’ll remember, there were two schools of timbralists: those who created new sounds electronically, and those who produced sounds by experimenting with existing acoustic instruments Crumb belongs in the latter camp)(Cope 50). Some of his most successful students include the composers Christopher Rouse, Jennifer Higdon and Osvaldo Golijov, one of my personal favorite composers of all time.Īs a composer, Crumb was influenced by Webern and his pointilistic serialism, which can be clearly seen in Crumb’s music. After graduating, Crumb landed a gig and taught composition at the University of Colorado and then later the University of Pennsylvania, where he remained for over 30 years retiring in the last decade. It was written in June, 1971 in Media, Pennsylvania. His very next piece was Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) (Cohen 12). In 1971, Crumb won an International Rostrum of Composers Award from UNESCO for Ancient Voices of Children. Black Angels for Electric Sting Quartet is probably Crumb’s most famous piece. Crumb is one of the most decorated composers of our times he won a Pulitzer Prize for Echoes of Time and the River: Four Processionals for Orchestra in 1968. For his doctorate, Crumb studied at the University of Michigan with Ross Lee Finney, and earned his DMA in 1959. He obtained a masters degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Bachelors from the Mason College of Music in Charleston in 1950. George Crumb was Born in Charleston, West Virginia on October 24, 1929. In the composer's own words, “by effacing a sense of human projection, will symbolize the powerful, impersonal faces of nature,” and the blue lighting evokes the sea.George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae or, Voice of the Whale (translated from Latin) The composer’s unpublished sketches reveal an original plan for seven variations that he later reduced to five.Ĭrumb instructs the performers to wear black half-masks and the stage is illuminated with blue lights. The introduction marks the beginning of time (“Vocalise”) and a coda for the end of time (a nocturne). Each variation is titled a different geological age of the Earth. The composer’s “electric” designation means the players should be amplified with microphones.įramed by an introduction and coda, Vox is constructed as a theme and variation form and takes on a “program” of the geologic ages. Crumb, instead of directly quoting the whale songs, was inspired to recreate whale-like sounds with instrumentation and special, timbral effects. In 1971, the New York Camerata commissioned the work, and along with the request, sent the composer a recording of whale songs. George Crumb’s iconic Vox Balaenae for Three Masked Players is a work for electric flute, electric cello, and electric piano. "Quiet and subtly enchanting, reveals Crumb’s discoveries of new instrumental resources at their most lyrical this second hearing confirmed that it is not a mere assemblage of sound effects but a sustained and beautiful dream vision of the deep." (Andrew Porter, New Yorker, April 28, 1971).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |