31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN (DAY 24)
For the composer’s 90th birthday, George Crumb’s “A Haunted Landscape.”
Tag: George Crumb
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George Crumb American Original at 90
George Crumb is an American original, the reigning Grand Old Man of American Music. Crumb, who makes his home in Swarthmore, PA, produces works with an economy and elegance that seem to contradict – and yet, somehow, paradoxically, to reinforce – an Ivesian tendency to suggest greater vistas beyond their seemingly modest means.
On a more visceral level, sometimes they can be downright scary. Which is especially amusing since, by all accounts – and supported by my own experience, having met him perhaps five or six times – he has been unfailingly approachable, modest and even cheerful.
It’s fortuitous indeed that his birthday falls so close to Hallowe’en. It’s not for nothing that his work for electric string quartet, “Black Angels,” was used in “The Exorcist.”
Crumb has enjoyed a remarkable Indian summer, drawing on the hymns and folk songs of his West Virginia boyhood and lending them a unique resonance through his imaginative and colorful use of percussion. These are collected into seven cycles for voice titled “American Songbook” – remarkably effective and affecting works, especially when heard live in concert, where the breadth and subtlety of the instrumentation can be fully appreciated.
Just because you’ve been pigeonholed as an avant-gardist doesn’t mean your music can’t be fun. “Mundus Canis” (“A Dog’s World”) is a musical portrait gallery for guitar and percussion inspired by the Crumbs’ family pets. Five of them are enshrined in the suite: Tammy, Fritzi, Heidel, Emma-Jean and Yoda. Apparently Yoda, a fluffy white mixed-breed, adopted from a New York City pound, was especially disobedient.
“Mundis Canis”
Many happy returns to George Crumb on his 90th birthday!
“Black Angels” (wait until after breakfast)
From his “American Songbook:”
“All the Pretty Horses”
“Poor Wayfaring Stranger”
“One More River to Cross”
“Give Me That Old Time Religion”
PHOTO: George Crumb with “bad dog” Yoda
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American Gothic Halloween Music
Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man!
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” with Hallowe’en lurking like a mad clown astride a vampiric spider around a Caligari corner, we’ll seek our thrills under the comparatively safe conditions of three American experiments in controlled terror.
Wander the creepy cornfields of the overactive imagination with music by George Crumb (“A Haunted Landscape”), Morton Gould (“Jekyll and Hyde Variations”), and Dominick Argento (“Le Tombeau d’Edgar Poe”).
Crumb, who was born on October 24, 1929, makes his home outside Philadelphia. Argento, who hails from York, PA, was born on October 27, 1927. Gould, born and bred in Queens, died in 1996 at the age of 82. All three composers were honored with the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Walk softly around these spine-tingling exercises in American Gothic. Join me, if you dare, for “Grave Endeavors,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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Childhood Nostalgia in Classical Music
The limpid air and lambent, silvery light of late August imbue one with a sense of nostalgia swaddled in the gentle melancholy of another summer winding down. How I feel for the young ‘uns straining against the inescapable vortex of another school year.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we listen to music by four composers who engage in musical reminiscences of childhood.
The American symphonist William Schuman based his “American Festival Overture” (1939) on a three-note call-to-play from his boyhood in New York City that was shouted on the syllables “Wee-Awk-Eee!”
Haskell Small’s “Visions of Childhood” (2011) is a cycle of piano pieces in the Robert Schumann “Kinderszenen” mode, a grown artist looking back to his boyhood. The work falls into ten brief movements: “A Long Time Ago;” “Playing Rough;” “A Little Story;” “Feeling Lonely;” “School’s Out;” “Haunted House;” “Frolicking;” “Look at Me!;” “Roller Coaster;” and “Lullaby.”
Charles Ives may have been a radical innovator, but his subject matter frequently looked back in nostalgia to the New England of his childhood. His Violin Sonata No. 4 (1906-1915, revised in 1942) bears the subtitle, “Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting,” a programmatic work that balances hymn tunes and rowdy boyhood high jinks.
As he entered his 70s, George Crumb embarked on a remarkably productive Indian Summer, which resulted in no less than seven volumes of “American Songbooks,” the last completed in 2011, when the composer was 82 years-old. Each volume consists of deeply personal treatments of songs Crumb recollected from growing up in West Virginia. We’ll hear selections from “American Songbook III: The River of Life” (2008). By employing his characteristic shades and cross-hatchings through an assortment of ear-tickling percussion effects, the composer provides his own commentary on the time-worn source material, lending it both unsuspected depth and an aura of timelessness.
It’s a far cry from “Kinderszenen.” Join me for “Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be” – 20th and 21st century composers look back to childhood – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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Avant-Garde Fun with Crumb and Berio
Just because someone classifies you as avant-garde doesn’t mean your music can’t be fun. Join me today as we celebrate two of music’s more engaging avant-gardists, George Crumb and Luciano Berio.
Crumb, who makes his home in Swarthmore, Pa., near Philadelphia, turns 87 today. Sure, he’s written his share of spooky music, but, like Charles Ives, personal connections and playful juxtapositions are seldom far away. For example, he’s devoted his twilight years to colorful and inventive settings of hymns and folk tunes from his formative years, growing up in West Virginia, which he’s collected into seven cycles for voice and percussion, titled “American Songbook.” These are remarkably effective and affecting works, especially when heard live in concert and the breadth and subtlety of the instrumentation can be fully appreciated.
Be that as it may, what we’ll hear this afternoon are five humoresques, titled “Mundus Canis” (“A Dog’s World”), a musical portrait gallery for guitar and percussion of the Crumbs’ family dogs. Apparently Yoda, a fluffy white mixed-breed adopted from a New York City pound, was especially disobedient.
In his best-known music, Berio had a tendency to work in collages (a term the composer disliked), but he also made groundbreaking use of electronics and extended techniques. There’s none of that in his own set of “Folk Songs,” from 1964. Written for his wife, the mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, the songs are mostly drawn from traditions of various countries and cultures, but some of them were actually written by Berio himself.
We’ll also raise a glass to German-Jewish composer and conductor Ferdinand Hiller, a close friend of Felix Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn and Hiller were both directors of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. One of Hiller’s pupils was Max Bruch, who was not Jewish. It was through Hiller that Bruch was introduced to the Yom Kippur prayer “Kol Nidre,” which became the basis for one of Bruch’s most famous concert pieces. Hiller was also the dedicatee of Schumann’s Piano Concerto.
I hope you’ll join me for music of Crumb, Berio, Hiller and more, today from 4 to 7 p.m., on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
PHOTO: George Crumb with “bad dog” Yoda
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