George Crumb

George Crumb (born October 24, 1929) is an American composer of modern and avant garde music. He is noted as an explorer of unusual timbres. Examples include spoken flute (one speaks while blowing into the instrument) and glass marbles poured onto an open piano)

Crumb's music

After initially being influenced by Anton Webern, Crumb became interested in exploring unusual timbres. He often asks for instruments to be played in unusual ways and several of his pieces are written for electrically amplified instruments.

Related Topics:
Anton Webern - Timbre

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Crumb's music often seems to be concerned about the theatre of performance as much as the music itself. In several pieces he asks players to leave and enter the stage during the piece. He has also used unusual layouts of musical notation in a number of his scores. In several pieces, the music is symbolically laid out in a circular or spiral fashion.

Related Topics:
Musical notation - Scores

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Several of Crumb's works, including the four books of madrigals he wrote in the late 1960s and Ancient Voices of Children, a song cycle of 1970 for two singers and small instrumental ensemble (which includes a toy piano), are settings of texts by Federico Garcia Lorca. Many of his vocal works were written for the virtuoso singer Jan DeGaetani.

Related Topics:
Madrigal - 1960 - Song cycle - Instrumental ensemble - Toy piano - Federico Garcia Lorca - Jan DeGaetani

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Black Angels (1970) is another piece which displays Crumb's interest in exploring a wide range of timbres. Written for amplified string quartet (referred to as "electric string quartet" by the composer in the score, although the instruments called for are acoustic ones), the players are required to play various percussion instruments and to bow small goblets as well as to play their instruments in both conventional and unconventional ways. It is one of Crumb's best known pieces, and has been recorded by the Kronos Quartet.

Related Topics:
String quartet - Percussion instrument - Kronos Quartet

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Another of Crumb's best known works are the four books of Makrokosmos (1972-74). The first two books are for solo piano, the third, known as Music for a Summer Evening, is for two pianos and percussion, and the fourth is for piano four-hands, titled "Celestial Mechanics." The title alludes to the six books of piano pieces by Béla Bartók, Microcosmos, and, like Bartók's work, Makrokosmos is a series of short character pieces. Apart from Bartók, Claude Debussy is another composer Crumb acknowledged as in influence here, although the techniques called for are far from what either of those composers knew. The piano is both amplified and prepared by the placing of objects on and between the strings. On several occasions the pianist is required to sing or shout certain words as well as playing. Makrokosmos was premiered by David Burge, who later recorded the work.

Related Topics:
Percussion - Béla Bartók - Claude Debussy - Prepared - David Burge

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Crumb's works are published by the C. F. Peters Corporation.

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