George Crumb - between reflection upon nature and contemplating it

• Authors: Marta Szoka
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

The author investigates the unique aesthetic program of George Crumb, one of the most important contemporary American composers. Crumb certainly occupies a unique place in the music of 20th century, not only because of his cultural background, or originality of artistic expression, but first of all, due to the presence of most dilemmas of the contemporary culture in his music. The question about the form of a relationship between human beings and nature at the turn of 20th/2ist century is one of them. In his artistic output Crumb remains an advocate of a concept of music which, as the most spiritual and magical of all arts, derives from deep reserves of human psyche on the one hand and from primal forces of nature, on the other one. The analytical aspects of the paper concern the problems of onomatopoeic imitation of the sounds of birds and a whale, symbolic allusions to the other composers (Debussy, Mahler), the concept of “larger rhythms of nature”, the phenomenon of echo and its forms in Crumb’s music, his search of natural pre-sounds of music (resulting in using non-traditional instruments), the idea of distant music, etc. Especially three pieces: An Idyll of the Misbegotten, Vox balaenae and Echoes of Time and the River are considered as the most characteristic.

Keywords

PL

philosophy of nature; George Crumb; syrinx; the moon; acoustic environment; symbolism; Vox balaenae; echo; distant music

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology
• Year: 2009
• Issue: 8
• Pages: 203-216

Dates

published

2018-10-17

Contributors

author

Marta Szoka

• professor at the Academy of Music in Łódź, music theorist and a concert organist. She received her Ph.D. from the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, in 1988. She has been a Fullbright Scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1993-1994)- She is the author of the books Polska muzyka organowa w latach 1945- 1985 [Polish organ music 1945-1985] (Łódź, 1993), Język muzyczny Franka Martina [The musical language of Frank Martin] (Łódź, 1995) and Frank Martin - muzyczne konteksty [Frank Martin - musical contexts] (Łódź, 2002), and co-author of the lexicon Łódzkie środowisko kompozytorskie 1945-2000 [Composers of Łódź 1945-2000] (Łódź, 2001). She has written also numerous articles on contemporary music, including Polish, Lithuanian and American composers.