![]() ![]() His most fertile years were the 1970s when the Black Angels string quartet screamed out opposition to America’s. George Crumb died at his home in Media, Pennsylvania on February 6, 2022. The important American composer George Crumb died yesterday at the age of 92. The attributes most frequently cited are: an extraordinarily sensitive ear producing highly refined timbral nuances, a very powerful evocative sense, and a sureness and concision in realizing his musical intentions. Getty Images The influential American composer George Crumb died Sunday at age 92. Annenberg Professor in 1983.Īudience enthusiasm, critical acclaim and colleagues’ praise have been extensive for Crumb’s works. News Obituaries George Crumb, an influential and deeply American composer, has died at age 92 Febru4:26 PM By: Anastasia Tsioulcas Heard on All Things Considered A 1968 portrait of George Crumb. His music has received numerous performances both in the US and around the world and his orchestral works have been performed by all the major American orchestras.įrom 1965 to 1997 George Crumb taught at the University of Pennsylvania where he became the Walter H. He is internationally recognized as a composer and has traveled abroad extensively for the State Department and other organisations to Asia, Australia and Europe. ![]() In 1995 Mr Crumb became the 36th recipient of the MacDowell medal, an award named in honor of the American composer which is awarded annually to a composer, writer or visual artist who, in the judgment of his/her peers has made an outstanding contribution to the nation’s culture. His principal teacher in composition was Ross Lee Finney at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the university from which he received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree.Ĭrumb has been the recipient of numerous honors, awards and commissions, including: the 1968 Pulitzer Prize the 1971 International Rostrum of Composers (UNESCO) Award Fromm, Guggenheim, Koussevitsky and Rockefeller Foundation Awards and was a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Many of his pupils became influential composers in their own right, including Jennifer Higdon, Osvaldo Golijov, Melinda Wagner and Christopher Rouse.George Crumb was born in Charleston, West Virginia, on October 24, 1929. "They're floating clear of that."Ĭrumb attracted a legion of students, both private and at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught from 1965 to 1995. "They're not thinking of aligning parts in a vertical way," he said. In a 2002 interview with All Things Considered, Crumb said that such nonstandard notation, which he used in much of his music, was freeing - not just for him, but for the musicians who played his work. The written score for one piece within his 1973 collection for solo piano, Makrokosmos II, is in the shape of a peace symbol. He received his doctorate in composition at the University of Michigan in 1959.Ĭrumb was famed for his notated scores - so visually beautiful that some were featured in museum exhibitions. He graduated from the Mason College of Music and Fine Arts in his hometown (which later became part of the University of Charleston), and received a master's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before traveling to study at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin as a Fulbright fellow. His parents were both professional musicians his father was a clarinetist and his mother played cello. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1968 for his work Echoes of Time and the River and a 2001 Grammy Award for his 1977 piece Star-Child, for soprano, children's choir, a male speaking choir, bell ringers and large orchestra.Ĭrumb was born Oct. it scared the bejabbers out of me." (An excerpt from the piece also formed part of the soundtrack for The Exorcist.) ![]() Violinist David Harrington was so inspired after hearing Black Angels that in 1973 he founded the famed Kronos Quartet to explore new music and new sounds for the traditional string quartet.ĭecades later, David Bowie declared the original recording of Black Angels to be one of his favorite albums of all time, writing: "It is a study in spiritual annihilation. No cause was given.Ĭrumb's howling, landmark 1970 work Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Darkland) (Images I) was a protest against the horrors of the Vietnam War that utilized spoken word, bowed water glasses and electronics. His death was announced by his longtime recording label, Bridge Records, which said that he died at his home in Media, Pa., with his family at his side. While audiences could find some of his music forbidding or opaque, it often mined a deeply felt and uniquely American vein of emotion. The influential American composer George Crumb died Sunday at age 92. ![]()
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