<\/p>
George Crumb was one of America\u2019s leading experimental composers, known for his unconventional demands on his musicians \u2013 he was a pioneer of what is generally known as \u2018extended techniques<\/strong><\/a>\u2019, which involves playing instruments in unconventional ways to produce novel and evocative sounds. Yet Crumb\u2019s music is anything but \u2018abstract\u2019: from the way it is written down \u2013 with staves curved and arranged to represents wheels, or a human eye \u2013 to the use of human voices and musical quotations loaded with significance, this is music which vividly captures emotional or psychological states.<\/p>\n A native of West Virginia, George Crumb\u2019s roots were essentially in rural America rather than in the city. Unlike his city colleagues, who tend to create sonic canvases to blot out the extraneous sounds of everyday urban life, Crumb\u2019s seems designed to complement the world in which it is conceived: it grows out of silence, and is meditative and dream-like. That is not to say it is ethereal: rather, it is dream-like in the broadest sense, blending the familiar (whether it is instrumental sounds, or snatches of music by composers such as Schubert<\/strong>, Bart\u00f3k<\/strong> or Mahler<\/strong>) with unfamiliar, and ranges in effect from ecstatic bell-like sounds to tenebrous nightmare.<\/p>\n Written when he was a Fulbright Scholar in Berlin, the Solo Cello Sonata came to be at a time when Crumb was yet to hit his stride as an avant-garde composer. The work already reflects his life-long admiration of Bart\u00f3k, as well as the form and manner of a Baroque suite. Nevertheless, is unmistakably a 20th-century work with its plangent expression and rich variety of instrumental colour.<\/p>\n Recommended recording:<\/strong><\/p>\n Matt Haimovitz (cello) Crumb\u2019s discovery of the poetry of Frederic Garc\u00eda Lorca was crucial to his development as a composer, and he aspired to match Lorca in pushing the boundaries of his music. Crumb made several settings of Lorca\u2019s poetry, but this is the work which gained him the greatest acclaim in the 1970s. The work was widely performed, notably by the soprano Jan DeGaetani, and was even recorded in the USSR. Haunting and strangely beautiful, it ends on a relatively optimistic note.<\/p>\n Recommended recording:<\/strong><\/p>\n Tony Arnold (soprano) and ensemble Crumb was in his 40th year when in 1969 he began composing his most widely known and admired work: Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark Land<\/em>. The horrors of the Vietnam War, which had escalated through the 1960s, were being brought home to Americans through photojournalism and TV coverage.<\/p>\n Black Angels<\/em>, described in the score as being for \u2018electric string quartet\u2019, creates a nightmarish, phantasmagoric sound-world. The string instruments are amplified, and the lead violinist plays music associated with the devil, including quotes from Tartini\u2019s \u2018Devil\u2019s Trill\u2019 and such disturbing sounds as pedal tones, created by pressing the bow strongly into the string as it is drawn across it. Players are also required at various times to play crystal glasses filled with different levels of water, as well as gongs and maracas. They are also directed to play their instruments in unorthodox ways, such as trilling with fingers capped with metal thimbles, or bowing the wrong end of their strings, so creating a muted, viol-like effect which is used \u2013 for instance \u2013 when the music quotes from Schubert\u2019s \u2018Death and the Maiden\u2019<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Recommended recording:<\/strong><\/p>\n Kronos Quartet Inspired by recordings of humpbacked whales singing, Crumb\u2019s Vox balaenae<\/em> is scored for flute, cello and piano. All the musicians are required to be masked and to play their instruments in unconventional ways. The flautist, as well as playing conventionally, also sings into their instrument; the pianist makes the strings play directly with his hands, as well as making unusual sounds with glass rods and paperclips; and the cellist produces a \u2018sea gull\u2019 sound from their instrument, as well as using other extended techniques<\/strong><\/a> and being required to play antique cymbals.<\/p>\nThe best works by George Crumb<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Solo Cello Sonata (1955)<\/h3>\n
Ancient Voices of Children (1970)<\/h3>\n
Black Angels (1970)<\/h3>\n
Vox balaenae (Voice of the Whale) (1971)<\/h3>\n