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George Crumb and the Alchemy of Sound: Essays on His Music (review)

2007; Music Library Association; Volume: 64; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/not.2007.0097

1534-150X

Victoria Adamenko,

Diverse Musicological Studies

Reviewed by: George Crumb and the Alchemy of Sound: Essays on His Music Victoria Adamenko George Crumb and the Alchemy of Sound: Essays on His Music. Edited by Steven Bruns and Ofer Ben-Amots. Colorado Springs, CO: Colorado College Music Press, 2005. [vii, 360 p. ISBN-13 978-093595-207-7. $36.] Illustrations, facsimiles, music examples. This new collection of thirteen essays and an introduction honors George Crumb on his seventy-fifth birthday. This publication is a major contribution to research on Crumb and follows a previous collection of essays (Don Gillespie, George Crumb: Profile of a Composer [New York: C. F. Peters, 1986]), and a bio-bibliography (David Cohen, George Crumb: A Bio-bibliography [Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002]). Still lacking is a single analytical monograph on the composer. The present volume comprises writings that range from personal to analytical, including valuable and detailed testimonies and analyses by performers, a flutist (Tracey Schmidt, essay no. 9), and a horn player and transcriber of Crumb's music (Robert Patterson, essay no. 10). The collection is multidisciplinary, with a contribution by a linguist exploring the Crumb-Lorca connection (Linda L. Elman, essay no. 2), and an investigation into the link between music and the visual arts (Michael D. Grace, essay no. 7). Each author is acknowledged with a biographical paragraph at the end of his or her essay. The refreshingly broad spectrum of approaches chosen in the volume reflects the fact that Crumb's audience is not limited to academia, in contrast to some other contemporary composers. One does not expect a fully referenced bibliographical apparatus from a keynote address by a music critic (James M. Keller, essay no. 1), which does not employ endnotes at all (even with a quotation, p. 9). Along with memoir-like prose containing casual recollections or dithyrambs, the reader will find more formal articles in the vein of music theory (Edward Pearsall, essay no. 4; William E. Lake, essay no. 5; Richard Bass, essay no. 8; and Dave Headlam, essay no. 12), and historical musicology (Andrew Stiller, essay no. 3; Steven Bruns, essay no. 6; Michael D. Grace, essay no. 7; and Don Gillespie, essay no. 13). Russell Steinberg's article even offers what may be called a "guide for listening," a valuable tool for perception of Crumb's music not as a succession of sound events, but as a "meta-counterpoint" (p. 230). Among the contributing authors are several composers and a critically-acclaimed authority on instrumentation. As a collection, the book achieves a fine balance between various perspectives on Crumb. The book accounts for a significant amount of study and high-quality research, which highlights new approaches and methodologies. To name a few examples, Dave Headlam in his article convincingly demonstrates that the present "polarized views of Crumb's music ... can be integrated" (p. 264). In his essay, Don Gillespie effectively places Crumb in historical context, traces his evolution, and shows the independence of the composer's discoveries [End Page 72] (p. 272). Steven Bruns's application of the concept of intertextuality to Crumb's use of parody (pp. 102–03) is well justified. The present volume is also an excellent source of primary material on Crumb, containing many communications with the composer and his previously unpublished remarks on music analysis and aesthetics (for example, pp. 198, 231). Moreover, the collection contains a vivid critical assessment of Crumb's work (for example, Russell Steinberg, essay no. 11, especially pp. 211–12). Still, especially with all the breadth of approaches and subjects involved in the multifaceted discussion of Crumb's work, the collection could benefit from an index and, perhaps, a list of illustrations, four of which are in color—a fine opportunity to see the reproductions of the very frescoes by Giotto that inspired Crumb's A Little Suite for Christmas, A.D. 1979. Some copyediting slips are unfortunate: omitted italics and caps for a composition title (Vox Balaenae, p. 7), misprint of "Haydn" in the right-side header for the entirety of Steven Bruns's article, and occasional inconsistency with labeling illustrations. Thus, examples 6–4a and 6–4b on pp. 112–113 are erroneously called "Figures," while the actual Figures appear...