17 Facts About George Crumb

George Crumb was especially influenced by composers such as Mahler, Debussy and Bartok; Crumb wrote his four-volume piano set Makrokosmos in response to Bartok's earlier piano set Mikrokosmos.

The use of pastiche is found in his music, as is text by Federico Garcia Lorca, whose poetry George Crumb set eleven times.

The elder George Crumb was a multifaceted musician, with activities that included conducting theatre orchestra for the music of silent film, teaching clarinet privately and at the Mason College, and working as both a music copyist and arranger.

George Crumb majored in music at the Mason College of Music and Fine Arts, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1950.

George Crumb's first teaching job was at a college in Virginia, before he became professor of piano and composition at the University of Colorado in 1958.

George Crumb's music fell between neoclassicism, which was perceived as outmoded, and the more radical music of the avant garde.

In works like Ancient Voices of Children, George Crumb employed theatrical ritual, using evocative masks, costumes, and sonorities.

Apart from Bartok, Claude Debussy is another composer George Crumb acknowledged as an influence here: Debussy's Preludes comprise two books of 12 character pieces.

Each of these works is a set of arrangements of American hymns, spirituals, and popular tunes: George Crumb originally planned to produce four such volumes, but in fact he continued to produce additional sets after the fourth was written, with the seventh volume of the series completed in 2010.

George Crumb retired from teaching in 1995, though in early 2002 he was appointed with David Burge to a joint residency at Arizona State University.

George Crumb's son David is a composer and, since 1997, assistant professor at the University of Oregon.

George Crumb recorded his Three Early Songs for the CD George Crumb 70th Birthday Album, and had performed his Unto the Hills.

George Crumb died at her parents' home on 31 October 2019.

George Crumb died in his home in Media, Pennsylvania, on 6 February 2022, at the age of 92.

George Crumb often asks for instruments to be played in unusual ways and several of his pieces, although written for standard chamber music ensembles, such as Black Angels or Ancient Voices of Children, call for electronic amplification.

Recordings of George Crumb's music have appeared on many labels, including several LPs issued by Nonesuch Records in the 1970s.

George Crumb was the recipient of a number of awards, including a 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his orchestral work Echoes of Time and the River and a 2001 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for his work Star-Child.