Without the program aspect of this piece, I would very like go to a different direction when try to make sense out of this piece. My own interpretation of the piece is that this piece’s emotion and tension has some connection with the very concepts of “Black Angel”, “Darkness”, and“Profanity”. The title, Black Angel, and its subtitle, “Thirteen Images from the Dark Land”, gives suggestions for the audience to establish their own listening experience according to the music and to the implication of the program. Program music is a tradition of the Western Art Music, fully developed during the Romantic period. For instance, I would like to label this music as a program music. These new techniques add new feelings into this piece.īlack Angel has some underlying connections with Western Art Music traditions. As a child, he transcribed for his father and developed an appreciation for calligraphy. Crumb was also known for his unique scores. One of his best-known pieces, Black Angels, was recorded by the Kronos Quartet and featured string players bowing goblets. For instance, in some part, Crumb utilizes “scooping effects”, in which the high violins play fast glissandos to sound like crying and yelling in other parts, Crumb also uses violins to imitate a flute by bowing their strings with the back of the bow (the wood). Singers are often challenged with caterwauling vocal gymnastics. These techniques produce a violent and grotesque quality for the piece.
While in Beethoven’s String Quartet the violinists play their instruments with conventional standards, Crumb developed several techniques producing sounds that we did not hear previously. It reminds me of the extreme expressionist in the modernism era.Ĭompared with Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major, Movement II, Black Angel does not have a form, a rhythmic pattern. Personally I really appreciate the frank and unconstraint anxiety the piece displays. The use of instrument is also challenged in this piece, with the violins being performed in unconventional way that will make a traditional violin teacher turn pale. It sounds like an experiment of dissonance intertwining with irregular beats in the rhythmic line. Black Angels George Crumb Threnody I: Night of the Electric Insects HIGH FREQUENCY WARNING Sheet music for Violin, Viola, Cello (String Ensemble). With exceptions of few fragments, the piece has no clear and consistent motifs, themes, or melody.
George crumb black angels score free#
Therefore, this piece is highly free and depends on the interpretation of the performers. Many parts in this work are not written in bar lines, making it impossible to have strict meters. Performed by the Mir Quartet Daniel Ching (. Crumb basically gives each of these elements a new meaning in his work, Black Angel. Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark Land (Images I), for electric string quartet, by George Crumb (1970). At the beginning of the course, we learned basic musical elements to be rhythm, meter, tempo, pitch, melody, dynamics, instrumental textures, harmony, tonality and form, etc. Crumb’s work challenges almost every aspect of the definition for music.
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