A conversation with George Crumb

[MsModernComposer]

Haunted Landscape is amazing!

[aliciabyer]

"bulla burtok"!

[hollymollyize]

Wow. The first time I heard him talk!

[DarkZekeX]

Awww :D I wanna meet him ^_^ Great composer. And he just seems so sweet ^^

[godihatelag]

the editor did not care for this woman.

[coelhoigor]

About composition: “I guess I think of the craftsmanship aspect of it, it’s just really something you do. You’re trained to do, you try to do it the best way you can, and there’s nothing special about it.”

He's right, guys.

[BachaBachaNinja]

Our graduate percussion quartet is playing "Winds of Destiny: American Songbook IV" (2004) by Mr. Crumb. Sample it on itunes. It's so much fun and it's a great work!

[trunks2861]

beautiful but dense....

[winstontheband]

Yeah - nature is definitely not real life...

[Skutieos7]

whats the name of the 2nd song that plays after black angels?

[SidewalkFrequencies]

She is soooo deep.

[composerpoet]

Glad to see an interview done on TV of a Serious American Composer. This is the first TV interview of any Classical Composer I've ever heard of or seen. I've been looking for this to occur for over 40 years. Interviews with Serious American Composers on TV is more than rare, it's pretty much non existent. Glad it was George Crumb.

[atc977]

I'm glad to see a giant of contemporary music being genuine, keeping it real...Most composers nowadays are arse-holes, or at least, there's a culture of that (in UK/Ireland)

[human20freedom]

pink floyd too.....:P

[danieleflauto]

Is there anyone of good will that I can write the text of the interview?

[danieleflauto]

ho bisogno della traduzione in italiano, c'è qualcuno che mi può aiutare?

[sptfgpn]

He's not an advocate of the punk ethic by the sound of it.

[musicalidea]

Crumb seems 2 link his idea of a "mystical" convergence point of all musical styles & epochs w his notion of a "natural resonance" of th landscape - both material & cultural - in which a composer is reared. Th broadness of th former is 'revealed' through th specificity of th latter. This is certainly a Romanticist notion not dissimilar 2 Coleridge's idylls or Caspar David Friedrich's paintings, wherein universal artistic truth emerges through an intense engagement w immediate natural environs.

[musicalidea]

His attempt to articulate his "musical DNA," unique from all others, is quite a 'Modernist' quest for an artist, no? This, along with the supposed "mysticism and spirituality" in which all points in the line of the past converge, suggests a kind of new-age transcendentalism which ramifies essence or meaning, rather than Post-modernism, which characterizes life and culture in terms of a state of immanent non-meaning, waste, noise, depthlessness or flatness.

[MovieMaestro36]

Dadaism is present in different strands of both modernism and postmodernism so that isn't the best deciding factor. For example, many modernists wanted "art for art's sake" or in this case music which really has no sense of meaning. As far as the DNA thing yes, I would agree that it is a modernist notion but postmodernism did not begin with a manifesto against its previous art movement like many other movements so it often continues traits from modernism.

[musicalidea]

No one is saying that Musical Dada is the "deciding factor," in distinguishing him as a post-modern composer. Crumb would by no means count as a Dadaist in any sense, Modern or Post-modern. The "pure form" anti-program, anti-allusion aspects of the 2nd Viennese School & Darmstadt are not Dadaist. I would place Kurtag, later Berio or later Ligeti in the Dada camp. Musical Dada, if indeed it exists, is not correspondent to the Dada (teens - 30s) and Neo-Dada (50s - early 70s) fine art movements.

[musicalidea]

It really depends on how one defines Postmodernism: as 1) a stylistic marker identifying specific kinds of art, music, architecture, film, literature, etc., as 2) a larger, socio-cultural epoch with its own 'epistemic' characteristics, ideals & feeling structures, or 3) a simple temporal designation of "music, art, culture, state-formation, etc." after, say, 1960. Often all 3 uses of the term are mixed together, in like manner to analagous labels, "Neo-Classical," "Romantic," "Modernist," etc.

[musicalidea]

Given the intense degree of sophistication and complexity present in his chamber and piano works of the 60s and 70s, it's funny to hear his sloppy, simplistic universalism - falsely coidentified with a Postmodern perspective - when it comes to the meaning of his music. Granted, it must be constrained very much so by the public, lowest-common-denominator aspect of the forum. I like his comments about the sense of inhereted acoustic, reverberation, etc...

[MovieMaestro36]

He's referring to the use of quotation which is present in a majority of his music which is very postmodern. As well, the simulation of non-western instruments with banjos and cellos is also very postmodern. Postmodern composers, unlike in most movements, don't often attack past schools of composition but continue them while incorporating whatever other ideas catch their fancy.

[musicalidea]

No, I agree with your assessment insofar as it captures the reason why others have tacked on the Postmodern label to his music. It is the textbook 101 definition of Postmodern music as polystylism, pastiche, eclecticism, bricolage, non-linear exposition, temporal and tonal "play" of allusions rather than centralized hierarchy or "program" that is spoken from a unified voice, etc., etc. He just doesn't reference these kinds of criterion in his own description here.

[musicalidea]

(referring to my previous comment) That is why the "neo-romantic" label which is sometimes conferred upon Crumb might be more fitting than Postmodern, though many could argue that the Neo-Romantic trend is a subgenre within the larger Postmodern movement.

[MovieMaestro36]

To my limited understanding, Neo-Romantic is more of an Anti-Modernist movement. There are several Modernist tendencies in his music such as the "Spiral Galaxy" score shaped as a spiral or his exploitation of extended techniques that would not be used by anti-modernists.

I believe Crumb is postmodern because postmodernism is more of a continuation of modernism with an commonly a stylistically eclectic nature but that's just my opinion. Postmodernism is very subjective.

[musicalidea]

As I also stated above, "many could argue that the Neo-Romantic trend is a subgenre within the larger Postmodern movement." In fact most would, as you have said, consider NR to be an "anti-modern" and therefore PM dev. Because PM is defined in so many ways - see my comments abt musical PM & the 3 common usages - & is a very contentious idea which, at least philosophically, denies its own possibility (as it claims the end of historicity), it is difficult, as u concur, to use in a hard & fast way.

[musicalidea]

I wld def not claim tht extended techniques r the provenance of Mod composition & not of supposed PM works. I can c why u wld contrast NR, itself a PM genre which again permits "plesantness" and tonality, w the highly "abrasive" use of extended technique in the Varese sense. But most of the really intense explorations of extended technique have occurred in the PM era - think Crumb, Xenaxis, Berio, Lachenmann, Cage, Tippet. Ur right to say that the PM/Mod distinction is murky & oft contradictory

[touchogrey]

"Wow, that's so interesting."

[SSOzzy]

@touchogrey She's cute though

[drummtb333]

does anyone think he has people skills?

[wesleyan97]

I need background hum too.

[boomchuckaboom]

Thank you for posting this.  I have always been

a fan of Crumb's beautiful, gossamer, mystical music. The first time I heard his music in my teens was a musical epiphany for me, and I was forever changed in what my concept of music could be.

[shubus]

Very enlightening! Love the ideas he expresses here. Wish the interview were longer. I first became acquainted with his music "Makrocosmos I" and have been a big fan ever since.

[abz48]

I can't say I really enjoy listening to his compositions, but Crumb expresses some brilliant ideas about music here.

[kampfobia]

fasfda

[jf104705]

What piece is the excerpt from that starts around 2:15? I've never heard that piece before.

[bigtomfagan]

I think it's "Old Time Religion" by Jim Reeves followed by "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" by Julia Ward Howe

[keithstacey999]

Brilliant. Thanks for posting!

[manoskoxari]

George Crumb... simply my "father" in composition... amazing interview! strong post modern philosophy and unique combination of extended techniques and timbres in a perfectly organized form in every single work! and pf course unchanged over time!

[soccahottay1]

do you know how to ananliyze his music?

[manoskoxari]

I try to explore and study the instrumental techniques he uses to illustrate his "pictures" i. e. "night of electric insects" etc. and also the way they make them work on the several eastern modes he uses in a western background of harmony. The structure in most of his works is simple but  not simplistic. Although I am not a specialist in analysis, I try to study the ways that he uses to develop his form in each piece.

[ruitye75ir94444]

To musically analyze works that rely solely on timbre, one would analyze the wavelengths used. Both Crumb and Penderecki have used tone clusters played by the strings to represent violence, but I doubt they disregarded pitch content. Crumb's music is likely structured by a row or set, but being a great composer of timbre, one would connect pitch structures with extended techniques. Examples of this occur in works of total serialization, like Stephen Heinemann on Boulez's Le marteau sans maître.

[vexme2]

Fascinating interview but it's a pity the excerpts were rather tame...still, in tv land, that's probably a good thing. I see his philosophy has remained unchanged over time. Nor has his amiable character and sharpness of mind. I think he was probably a post-modernist from the day he was born.