The conclusion of the cadenza is announced by a parody of the opening measures of Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra. This combination of instrumental and vocal sound produces an eerie, surreal timbre, not unlike the sounds of the humpbacked whale. “The opening vocalise, marked in the score, ‘Wildly fantastic, grotesque,’ is a kind of cadenza for the flutist, who simultaneously plays his or her instrument and sings into it. “The form of Voice of the Whale is a simple three-part design, consisting of a prologue, a set of variations named after the geological eras, and an epilogue. “The masks,” he explained, “by effacing the sense of human projection, are intended to represent symbolically the powerful, impersonal forces of nature, that is to say, nature dehumanized.” To provide a further sense of the whale’s ocean surroundings, he suggested deep blue stage lighting.Ĭrumb himself has described the music as follows: He added color by calling on the flutist to sing and play simultaneously, the cellist to tune his or her strings off their normal pitch, the pianist to strum the instrument’s strings pizzicato, and the cellist and flutist to strike crotales (antique cymbals).įurther, he directed the performers to wear either black half-masks or visor masks. To depict the sounds of the whale and its marine environment, Crumb scored the work for flute, cello and piano, all electronically amplified. Music might be defined as a system of proportions in the service of a spiritual impulse,” he has written, and this seemed to apply to whales as well as to human beings. Crumb was struck not only by the quality of the sounds themselves but also by the natural phenomenon of the huge animals singing as they swam through the ocean. Vox Balaenae, composed in 1971, was inspired by a tape recording by a marine scientist of the sounds emitted by the humpback whale. He has also used such unconventional means as electronic amplification, tuned water glasses, quotations from other composers and masks for the performers. In addition, he has composed a large number of instrumental works, using unusual instruments or combinations of instruments, and producing an enormous range of instrumental effects and sonorities. For many years he has been composer in residence at Pennsylvania.Ĭrumb is best known for his settings of verse by the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, particularly in his Ancient Voices of Children and four books of Madrigals. Teaching appointments followed at the Universities of Colorado and Pennsylvania. He studied at the Mason College of Music in Charleston, and earned advanced degrees at the Universities of Illinois and Michigan. In 1968 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Echoes of Time and the River, an orchestral work, and in 1971, the International Rostrum of Composers (UNESCO) Award for his entire body of compositions.Ĭrumb was born in Charleston, West Virginia, into a musical family – his father was a band leader, his mother, a cellist, and his brother, a flutist. He has received grants and awards from the Fromm, Coolidge, Guggenheim, Koussevitzky and Rockefeller Foundations and from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. George Crumb is one of the most respected of the generation of American composers who reached maturity in the third quarter of the 20 th century.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |