George Crumb
George Crumb
George Crumbis an American composer of avant-garde music. He is noted as an explorer of unusual timbres, alternative forms of notation, and extended instrumental and vocal techniques. Examples include seagull effect for the cello, metallic vibrato for the piano, and using a mallet to play the strings of a contrabass, among numerous others. He is not an electronic music composer; however, many works call for amplification of instruments, such as Black Angelsor Ancient Voices of Children. Crumb defines music as...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth24 October 1929
CityCharleston, WV
CountryUnited States of America
In any case, the task of finding fresh approaches to opera and to choral music will be inherited by the future.
In general, I feel that the more rationalistic approaches to pitch-organization, including specifically serial technique, have given way, largely, to a more intuitive approach.
An interesting practice in music since the atonal period of the Viennese composers has been the widespread use of a few tiny pitch cells.
Numerous recordings of non-Western music are readily available, and live performances by touring groups can be heard even in our smaller cities.
In a broader sense, the rhythms of nature, large and small - the sounds of wind and water, the sounds of birds and insects - must inevitably find their analogues in music.
The retrospective glance is a relatively easy gesture for us to make.
Nonetheless, I sense that it will be the task of the future to somehow synthesize the sheer diversity of our present resources into a more organic and well-ordered procedure.
I am certain that most composers today would consider today's music to be rich, not to say confusing, in its enormous diversity of styles, technical procedures, and systems of esthetics.