is one of the most frequently performed composers in today's musical world. Crumb was the winner of Grammy and Pulitzer Prizes. Crumb's music often juxtaposes contrasting musical styles, ranging from music of the western art-music tradition, to hymns and folk music, to non-Western musics. Many of Crumb's works include programmatic, symbolic, mystical and theatrical elements, which are often reflected in his beautiful and meticulously notated scores.

A shy, yet warmly eloquent personality, Crumb retired from his teaching position at the University of Pennsylvania after more than 30 years of service. Honored by numerous institutions with honorary Doctorates, and the recipient of dozens of awards and prizes, Crumb made his home in Pennsylvania, in the same house where he and his wife of more than 60 years raised their three children. George Crumb's music is published by C.F. Peters and an ongoing series of "Complete Crumb" recordings, supervised by the composer, is being issued on Bridge Records.

Crumb composed pieces in the 1960s called Madrigals, which were divided into four books. They were:

• Madrigals, Books One and Two, written in 1965.

• Madrigals, Books Three and Four, written in 1969.

Each of the four Madrigals was written for a mezzo-soprano vocalist, flute, harp, contrabass, and percussion instruments. The contrabass in one of the works was played with a mallet instead of the traditional method of using the fingers. This is an example of Crumb's inventive and unconventional way of writing music. These pieces also include the written material of Frederico García Lorca. 

George Crumb's scores are recognized for having unusual visual appeal and nonstandard musical notation that often has a symbolic or meaningful shape, like a peace sign, circle, or spiral. Some of his work was so visually appealing that it was included in museum exhibits. Crumb explained that he included visual symbolism in his music because he felt it added a layer of meaning to the work.

George Crumb (b. 1929-2022) was an American modern classical and avant-garde composer who formed his distinct style, featuring unusual timbres and innovative sonorities, in the early 1960s. By the time he finished “Black Angels” on March 13, 1970, the composer had already won a Pulitzer Prize (1968) and established himself as the creator of a highly spiritual and poetic sound world. 

In Crumb’s words, The composition of “Black Angels” started with a simple commission from the University of Michigan for the Stanley Quartet, so I was first of all faced with the task of coming up with a string quartet. I had not worked in that medium since my student days. At the outset, I wasn’t planning anything like a political statement; I was just writing a piece of music. But very soon after I got into the sketching process, I became aware that the musical ideas were picking up vibrations from the surrounding world, which was the world of the Vietnam time. And there were dark currents operating and those things were somehow finding their way into the conception of the string quartet. By the time I finished writing the whole piece, in token of this recognition of its character and identifying with that very dark time, I inscribed the work “In Time of War” using the model of Joseph Haydn’s “Mass in Time of War.”

 “Black Angels” was premiered by the Stanley Quartet in October of 1970, but it was the New York String Quartet (Paul Zukofsky, Romuald Teco, Timothy Eddy, and Jean Dupouy) that made the first commercial recording of the piece in 1971. The composition calls for Electric Violin I, Electric Violin II, Electric Viola, and Electric Cello. Previously, Crumb employed combinations of both amplified and acoustic instruments, but never before (or after) in the quartet genre. Having all four string quartet instruments in amplification (hence Crumb’s label “electric string quartet”) clearly produces a striking effect, which made this piece an icon of American avant-garde music. 

In the performance notes attached to the score, Crumb specifies the effect he seeks: The amplification of the instruments is of critical importance in “Black Angels.” In addition to their regular duties, the quartet players are engaged in shouting and whispering in different languages, playing tam-tams, maracas, and water-tuned crystal goblets. They are asked to trill on the strings with thimble-capped fingers, bowing on the “wrong” side of the strings, bow the “lip” of the tam-tam with a contrabass bow, and more. A quintessential avant-gardist, Crumb includes mere noises. At one instance, he indicates in the score: “Gradually increase bow pressure until pitch becomes pure noise.” 

Many of Crumb’s compositions pursue philosophical and mystical goals and narrate a story. “Black Angels,” in Crumb’s own description, “portrays a voyage of the soul. The three stages of this voyage are Departure (fall from grace), Absence (spiritual annihilation) and Return (redemption).” The programmatic subtitles of Departure, Absence, and Return are clearly modeled on the ones Beethoven used in his piano sonata op. 81a. Crumb saturates “Black Angels,” which is largely atonal, with other allusions to tonal music, which he acknowledges in the foreword: a quotation from Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” quartet, medieval sequence “Dies Irae,” Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill,” and more. The dramatic concept of “Black Angels” is imbued with Christian symbolism. In his notes for the recording, Crumb comments on “the essential polarity--God versus Devil” and how the “black angel” symbolizes the fallen angel. Section 4 of the piece is subtitled “Devil Music” (Vox Diaboli) and calls for a cadenza by solo violin. In the section titled “God-Music,” we hear a cadenza by the cello solo. Continuing in the line of mournful Lorca-inspired nocturnes Crumb wrote in the early 1960s, “Black Angels” is even darker in tone and emotional intensity, aided by the characteristic subtitle “Thirteen Images from the Dark Land.” The sounds range from highly disturbing, scary, and piercingly dissonant in “Electric Insects” to beautifully melodic in “God-Music” and delicate in the concluding section. 

“Black Angels” distinctly played to the sensibilities of its era. Musicologist Robert Greenberg even went as far as comparing the opening, “Threnody I: Night of the Electric Insects,” to the sound of Vietnam War helicopters. Beyond just that immediate appeal, the piece has continued to excite the imagination of listeners to the present day. Countless more performances and recordings followed the now-historical first recording by the New York String Quartet, which caused a splash not only in musical circles but also in the broader culture. It influenced professional musicians from both the academia and the popular camp. David Bowie named it as one of his favorites, while the violinist David Harrington was so inspired by it that, in 1973, he decided to establish the Kronos Quartet, which eventually made its own recording of the piece in 1990. The opening section of “Black Angels” is heard in the soundtrack of the movie “The Exorcist,” while “God-Music” was used in the television series “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.” In literature, Elizabeth Hand acknowledged borrowing the chapter titles for her dark fantasy novel “Waking the Moon” from the names of the sections of “Black Angels.” The quartet also acquired great international recognition and became a staple piece frequently played by many ensembles specializing in modern music around the world. 

CREDIT: Victoria Adamenko received her Ph.D. in Musicology from Rutgers University. She is the author of “Neo-Mythologism in Twentieth Century Music” (Pendragon Press, 2007).

has earned critical accolades for her music's lyricism, musical imagery and emotional power. Lawson Taitte (The Dallas Morning) News wrote, “Ms. Brouwer has one of the most delicate ears and inventive imaginations among contemporary American composers.”  Brouwer’s honors include an Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Meet The Composer Commissioning/USA award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Ohio Council for the Arts Individual Fellowship, Cleveland Arts Prize, Lebenbom Award, Ettelson and International Women’s Brass Conference prizes and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, Ford Foundation, John S. Knight Foundation, Cleveland Foundation and Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. Her music has been called “devoid of slickness…true to a vision” (New York Times), “inhabiting its own peculiarly bewitching harmonic world” (New York Times), and “a marvelous example of musical imagery.” (American Record Guide).

The Music Division of the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center established a Margaret Brouwer Collection in 2015.  Her scores, manuscripts, papers, and recordings will be available for research by scholars, composers and performers.  Margaret Brouwer was named one of "The Best of Female Classical Composers" on Naxos' album POWER TO THE WOMEN. Dr. Brouwer served as Head of the Composition Department and holder of the Vincent K. and Edith H. Smith Chair in Composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music (1996 – 2008).   She was NEA Composer in Residence with the Roanoke (VA) Symphony (1992-1997) and Composer-in-Residence at Washington and Lee University (1988-1996).  Residencies have included those at the MacDowell Colony where she was a Norton Stevens Fellow, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Charles Ives Center for American Music.   Recordings of Brouwer’s music can be found on the Naxos, New World, CRI, Crystal, Centaur, and Opus One labels.

In 2018, Brouwer’s 80-minute revised Oratorio, Voice of the Lake, was premiered in Cleveland, then brought to Cincinnati to be performed at the International Symposium of the North American Lake Management Society. A professional video was made of the performance and aired on various cable TV stations throughout the country.  Chamber work premieres in 2019 were Through the Haze (4 percussionists), All Lines are Still Busy (solo violin), and This Morning is Beautiful (tenor and piano).  Her current finished commissions include a new work called Parallel Isolations for Orli Shaham and the Pacific Symphony's Ludwig Cafe Chamber Series to be performed with Covid restrictions, and Fear, Hiding, Play for the American Wild Ensemble which will be premiered at the International Clarinet Association Clarinetfest in June 2021. Orchestral commissions since 2009 include those from the symphonies of Detroit, Dallas, Rochester, American Composers Orchestra, CityMusic Cleveland and performances include Flagstaff, Maryland, Columbus, Toledo, Canton, Cabrillo, Liverpool, the Royal Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Seattle, St. Louis, and Poznan Philharmonic (Poland) symphonies.  Her ensemble music has been performed by such ensembles as American Modern Ensemble, Alias, counter)induction, Composers Now, Da Capo, MOZAIC, Continuum, Off the Hook Arts, AURA Contemporary Ensemble, the Audubon, Da Vinci, Cavani and Cassatt String Quartets at venues throughout the country including at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Symphony Space, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Orchestra of St. Luke’s “Second Helping,” SubCulture, Kennedy Center, Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, Concoran Gallery, Philips Gallery, National Opera Center, Boston’s Dinosaur Annex, Aspen Summer Music Festival, Bowdoin’s Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music including venues in Taiwan and Germany.

Hades has abducted Persephone to the Underworld.  Demeter discovering that her daughter Persephone is missing goes searching for her, experiencing magical adventures on her quest.  Finally learning what has happened, Demeter is enraged and demands that Zeus order Hades to release Persephone.  The battle of wits, power, and force of will between Demeter, Zeus and Hades begins.  Eventually, Demeter refuses to fulfill her function as goddess of living things, so that nothing can grow or be born, until Zeus orders Hades to release Persephone.  Demeter Prelude portrays the spirit of Demeter’s many adventures during her search for Persephone, her personality and character, as seen by the composer, and her confrontation with Zeus and Hades.  Demeter Prelude was commissioned for the Audubon String Quartet by the Reston Prelude Festival.

-Margaret Brouwer