CHAPTER 53
Extended Techniques: Crumb and the New Virtuosity in America
OVERVIEW
This chapter discusses George Crumb’s music as an example of how contemporary composers
incorporate extended techniques in order to reach new levels of creativity and expression.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. To understand the music of George Crumb as challenging performers to sing and play in
nontraditional and often difficult ways
2. To understand Crumb’s four books of Madrigals as representative of his approach to
incorporating extended techniques in his music
LECTURE SUGGESTIONS
Have students form pairs to listen to Crumb’s Caballito negro, focusing on the musical elements
of the piece (melody, harmony, form, rhythm/meter, expression, and timbre). Ask students to
rank these elements according to which they believe are emphasized or most readily detected in
the piece. Does one element emerge as more important than the others? Or do some elements
seem not to be as important as others? What qualities in the music give this impression? Does the
ranking of musical elements have any bearing on any meaning derived from the text? After
asking pairs to offer their thoughts, ask the remaining students what they believe to be the
meaning of the poem and how the music underscores this meaning.
ASSIGNMENT SUGGESTIONS
We were first introduced to madrigals in Chapter 15, with Farmer’s Fair Phyllis. In this chapter,
we are exploring a contemporary madrigal by the American composer George Crumb. Do you
find any elements of the Renaissance-era madrigal in Crumb’s twentieth-century madrigal?
Apart from their obvious stylistic differences (such as harmony, melody, and instrumentation), to
what extent do these pieces share a common expressive purpose?
TEACHING CHALLENGES
Students unfamiliar with the mechanics of playing the piccolo might not quite grasp how and why
flutter-tonguing would be considered an extended technique. Invite a colleague to class to
demonstrate and explain traditional piccolo playing and how flutter-tonguing diverts from this
approach.
SUPPLEMENTAL REPERTORY
Crumb: Black Angels
SUPPLEMENTAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bruns, Steven, and Ofer Ben-Amots, ed. George Crumb and the Alchemy of Sound. Colorado
Springs, CO: Colorado College Music Press, 2005. For more on Crumb’s madrigals see
Linda L. Elman’s essay “George Crumb and Federico García Lorca: Transposing a Poetic
Pastiche into a Musical Mosaic.”
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Extended Techniques: Crumb and the New Virtuosity in America (Chapter 53)
I. Avant-Garde Virtuosity
A. George Crumb (b. 1929)
1. American avant-garde composer
2. education: Mason College of Fine Arts, University of Illinois, University of Michigan
3. teaching positions: Colorado, New York, University of Pennsylvania
4. Pulitzer Prize 1968, Echoes of Time and the River
5. influences: art music tradition, folk themes, non-Western sounds
6. musical style: contemporary techniques, expressive ends
a. new sonorities and timbres
b. Sprechstimme (spoken melody)
c. quarter tones
d. “white” tones
e. extra-musical content, theatrical concepts
7. works: orchestral music, vocal music, four books of madrigals, chamber music, music
for amplified piano
B. Caballito negro (Little Black Horse)
1. last song from Madrigals, Book II
2. soprano with metallic percussion instruments and flute or piccolo
3. voice as virtuosic instrument
4. text: Frederico García Lorca poem
a. extracts two refrains, alternates between them
b. images of death
5. phrase endings: descending, ominous words
C. Listening Guide 42: Crumb, Caballito negro (Little Black Horse) (1965)
1. three-part form (A-B-A´)
2. regular pulsations, no sense of meter
3. extended technique: flutter-tonguing, glissandos, whispering
4 opening: pounding rhythm, piccolo and percussion, disjunct vocal line
5. return of A section: vocalist neighs like a horse