Graphically, Crumb often uses tempo marks without barlines, which also happens in Vox Balaenae (Cope 221). Crumb, like many of his contemporaries, also experiments with graphic notation (Cope 216). Crumb is known for quoting existing pieces in bizarre out of context settings this, in combination with the new timbres he designed often earned Crumb the label of ‘surrealist’ (Griffiths 179). “Crumb described himself as having ‘an urge to fuse unrelated elements and juxtapose the seemingly incongruous” (Griffiths 179). He also experimented with new and alternate tuning systems, often requiring instrumentalists to change tunings in the middle of a piece (he does this with the cello in Vox Balaenae too). He was considered avant garde for his synthesis of styles (fusing genres such as Flamenco with Baroque quotations, Mahler orchestrational styles, and Asian influences, etc.)(Cope 198). Crumb also played with alternative bowings, prepared piano, electrically amplified instruments, unconventional bows or beaters, taps, knocks, singing while playing instruments, etc. Crumb experimented with color fingerings which are alternative fingerings used in succession with each other to alter the timbre and color of a pitch slightly (Cope 51). Crumb was “influenced by Ive’s fascination with sounds for their own sake” (Sitsky 218). 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. George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae or, Voice of the Whale (translated from Latin)
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