George Crumb: Ghosts from Alhambra/Voices from a Forgotten World

George Crumb's remarkable music includes frequent references to Spain, including his fascination with the poems of the tragic Federico Garcia Lorca, and "Ghosts of Alhambra" is a seven-part suite composed in 2009 of remarkable interest based on Lorca's 1921 "Poem of the Deep Song" written for traditional flamenco performances held at the historic Alhambra.  This chamber work features a male baritone, a guitarist and a percussionist and the voice lends a sombre and forbidding aspect to the mysterious voicings of the guitar and an often rumbling of the percussion.

The "American Songbook" series by Crumb is not about standard pop fare, but an unusual look at a variety of pieces that reflect what the composer identifies as from all directions of the compass on the continent and incorporating native Indian themes, reimaginings of popular music pieces and other music reflecting the diversity of the United States.  The 2006 "Voices from a Forgotten World" turned out to be an added chapter to what was slated to be a four-part series and continued on to other parts.

There are ten pieces in this set, ranging from 1 1/2 to over 9 minutes and reflecting a great diversity of types of material.  There are two voices, a baritone and a mezzo-soprano with the instrumentation consisting of amplified piano and four percussionists employing a wide range of types.  Crumb subtitled these "A Cycle of American Songs from North and South, East and West" and there are pieces referencing native peoples, New England, Appalachia and the South, but they also reflect time periods from the 17th century to the first half of the 20th and themes varying from native concerns to labor to takes on Stephen Foster's "Beautiful Dreamer."

The songs in "Voices from a Forgotten World" also reflect myth, humor, pathos and other emotional ranges and, as is often Crumb's way, there is a great deal of foreboding and mystery to much of the cycle, while "Somebody Got Lost in a Storm" is jarring, intense and powerful with the percussion and piano reflecting the element of the storm in a dramatic fashion.

This album is the fifteenth in a series of the complete works of Crumb and Starobin's involvement is notable because, in 1981, he established the Bridge label which issued the recording.  He deserves kudos for his dedication to this great composer and issuing beautifully performed and recorded albums like this.

George Crumb: Ancient Voices of Children/Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III)

This blogger's first encounter with the magical work of composer George Crumb (born in 1929) came through the title track of Kronos Quartet's Black Angels, a 1970 piece of disturbing power featuring electric violins in a thematic tie to the Vietnam War, covered on this blog.  This stirred an interest, though long delayed, of exploring Crumb's work.

This Elektra Nonesuch recording takes two pieces from the composer's body of work that have very different structural components.  "Ancient Voices of Children" is from 1970 and, as Crumb states on his Web site (see here), these six pieces forming a song cycle capped off an eight-year period of absorption with the incredible poetry of Federick Garcia Lorca, whose death at the hands of Spanish fascists during the era of Francisco Franco's ascendance during the civil war that ravaged that country in the 1930s enhanced his legendary status. 

Female and young male soprano vocalizations of Lorca's evocative words are brilliantly supported by a variety of unusual instruments, including a toy piano, a musical saw, an oboe, harmonica, mandolin, harp and a variety of percussion.  Four of the six pieces use Lorca' poetry, while the other two are interludes.  Perhaps the most striking effect is the female soprano's singing into a piano, which creates an unusual vocal effect with the strings.  As Crumb notes, the boy's voice is heard in the background until the last song when he joins the female. 

Also of note is the way the composer has the instrumentalists play with varying pitches, as well as uses a palette of vocalizations such as whispers, singing and shouting, which further support the mystical and dreamlike qualities of the music and soprano singing.  The inventive mixing of instruments, changes in their pitch and tonality, and the unusual vocal elements make "Ancient Voices of Children" an unforgettable experience, especially if you've read Lorca's poetry, which I did some years ago.

As to "Music for a Summer Evenig," this 1974 work features two amplified pianos and a pair of percussionists, a structure employed first by Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, who will be featured here someday, in the 1930s.  There is a great variety of percussion instruments used in this piece, including some that are ancient and exotic, qualities that recur frequently through Crumb's work, including Tibetan prayer stones, African log drums and thumb piano, a metal "thunder sheet," and slide-whistles. 

As with the first piece, "Music" employs an influence from poetic quotations and uses all-instrumental interludes betwen them.  The amplified pianos also have some different sounds associated with them, including one movement in which sheets of paper are laid over the strings.  Not surprisingly, given Crumb's fascination with the duende (or passion) of Lorca, one of these is the mystical and spiritual Rainer Maria Rilke, whose work was also read by this blogger back in the early 90s.

Crumb, who has won a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy, among many other awards and achievements, but is shamefully underrecognized and appreciated, is one of the truly unique and masterly composers of modern music.  This excellent recording, issued in 1987, is another stellar release by the Elektra Nonesuch label.