CR803 George Crumb Music of Our Time, Vol. 3: Music of George Crumb Orchestra 2001 James Freeman, artistic director boy soprano (mvt. 5); Dorothy Freeman, oboe and harmonica; Patrick Mercuri, mandolin; David Crumb, mandolin (mvt. 3); Sophie Labiner, harp; Marcantonio Barone, electric piano and toy piano; Susan Jones, William Kerrigan, and Kenneth Miller, percussion; George Crumb, Kenneth Miller, and Marcantonio Barone, humming in mvt. IV; James Freeman, conductor A Little Suite for Christmas, A.D. 1979 (1980) ........... (13:57) After Giotto’s Frescoes in the Chapel at Padua 8. I. The Visitation ....................................... (3:10) 9. II. Berceuse for the Infant Jesus ............... (1:42) 10. III. The Shepherd’s Noël .......................... (1:08) 11. IV. Adoration of the Magi ........................ (1:41) 12. V. Nativity Dance .................................... (1:00) 13. VI. Canticle of the Holy Night ................. (2:36) 14. VII. Carol of the Bells .............................. (2:36) Marcantonio Barone, piano Three Early Songs (1947) .......................................... (8:47) 15. Night (Robert Southey) ............................ (2:59) 16. Let It Be Forgotten (Sara Teasdale) ......... (3:17) Ancient Voices of Children (1970) ............................ (24:59) 17. Wind Elegy (Sara Teasdale) ..................... (2:31) 1. I. El niño busca su voz (The little boy was looking for his voice) ................................ (4:10) Barbara Ann Martin, soprano; James 2. Dances of the Ancient Earth ..................... (2:30) Freeman, piano 3. II. Me he perdido muchas veces por el mar 18. Dream Sequence (Images II) (1976) ................... (14:22) (I have lost myself in the sea many times). (2:15) Geoffrey Michaels, violin; Lori Barnet, cello; 4. III. ¿De dónde vienes, amor, mi niño? (From James Freeman, piano; Susan Jones, percussion; where do you come, my love, my child?) . (3:48) Sonja Downing, Ken Williams, and Sydney 5. IV. Todas las tardes en Granada, todas las Foster, glass harmonica tardes se muere un niño (Each afternoon in Granada, a child dies each afternoon) ....... (2:38) 6. Ghost Dance .............................................. (2:17) Total playing time: 60:02 7. V. Se ha llenado de luces mi corazón de seda (My heart of silk is filled with lights) ....... (7:17) Ê & © 1998 Composers Recordings, Inc. Barbara Ann Martin, soprano; Derek Yale, © 2006 Recorded Anthology of American Music, Inc. boy soprano (mvts. 1 and 3); Noel Bisson, Notes Some Personal Reminiscences about George Crumb wanted to know and play every note this composer had I was a young first-year instructor in music at Swarthmore written, and to share that music with everyone I knew. College and a freelance bass player when I first met George The chance for me to become acquainted with George on a Crumb (b Charleston, WV, 24 Oct 1929). The enterprising more personal level came with Swarthmore College’s decision conductor of the Philadelphia Composers Forum, Joel Thome, a few years later to erect the remarkable Lang Music Building decided to try out the new bass player in town and invited me and to commission a piece for the inauguration of the new to play in a concert that included the first book of Crumb’s building. The piece turned out to be Music for a Summer Madrigals, for soprano, vibraphone, and bass. Practicing my Evening (Makrokosmos III), for two amplified pianos and two part, I was immediately entranced by the sensuous sounds, the percussionists. My friend and colleague Gilbert Kalish and I remarkably acute understanding of the instruments, the clear were to be the pianists. Surely one of the most exciting things sense that every note and every rest were essential to the piece, for any performer must be to open the pages of a major new and the extraordinarily beautiful reflection of Lorca’s haunting work whose arrival one has been impatiently anticipating for poetry. The piece literally changed my life, for I realized that I months, and to discover in those pages a masterpiece! That is certainly what Gil, Ray DesRoches, Richard Fitz, and I all felt NWCR803 - George Crumb: Music of Our Time, Vol. 3: Music of George Crumb Page 1 of 7 on opening our mail one morning in December of 1974. Most —James Freeman of the rehearsals were held in Ray’s studio at William Paterson James Freeman’s involvement with my music has been truly College in north Jersey. George and I lived only a few miles multi-faceted. He was (with Gilbert Kalish) one of the original from each other in suburban Philadelphia and drove the five- pianists of Music for a Summer Evening; as contrabassist he hour round trip together for each rehearsal. It was on these made the first recording of Madrigals; and he played sitar in trips that I first began to know George apart from his music. the first recording of Lux Aeterna (and in a later one on CRI). One of my most vivid memories from those trips is driving Jim has a profound understanding of my musical intentions home at three in the morning after one particularly long and the ability to realize these in beautiful sound. I am rehearsal and finding that I could not buy gasoline anywhere, delighted to be associated with him and the wonderful despite the fact that we were close to running out—because my musicians of Orchestra 2001 in this new recording of my license plate ended in an even number (this was in the midst of music. the gasoline crisis). Barely able to contain myself, I was —George Crumb furious at the idiocy of the law and at the gas station attendant’s absolute refusal to sell us a drop, but George was Notes on the Music serenely (and characteristically) unruffled and said not to Ancient Voices of Children worry, he had heard that driving at exactly fifty miles per hour Ancient Voices of Children was composed during the summer conserved gas most efficiently, and that he thought we had an of 1970 on commission from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge outside chance of making it home if we did that. I am certain Foundation, while I was in residence at Tanglewood, that with anyone else in the car, we would have found Massachusetts. This work forms part of an extended cycle of ourselves stranded on the Jersey Turnpike at 4 A.M. on a cold vocal compositions based on the poetry of Federico García February morning. George maintained a constant close watch Lorca that has absorbed much of my compositional energy on the speedometer while I drove, correcting me immediately over the years. if the dial rose to fifty-two or fifty-three. The car ran out of gas In Ancient Voices of Children, as in my earlier Lorca settings, I as I pulled into George’s driveway. have sought musical images that enhance and reinforce the There is one fact about our recording of Music for a Summer powerful, yet strangely haunting imagery of Lorca’s poetry. I Evening (made in 1975, now available on Electra/Nonesuch feel that the essential meaning of this poetry is concerned with CD 79149-2) that I have always thought ought to be known. In the most primary things: life, death, love, the smell of the the fourth movement, Myth, one of the pianists is asked to earth, the sounds of the wind and the sea. These “ur-concepts” groan (“eerie, uncanny”) several times. All four of us tried, but are embodied in a language that is primitive and stark, but George was dissatisfied with the timbre of everyone’s which is capable of infinitely subtle nuance. groaning: one was too sensual, another too sleepy, a third too The texts of Ancient Voices are fragments of longer poems that deep, and the fourth too comical. We asked him to do it, and it I have grouped into a sequence that seemed to suggest a is in fact the composer’s own groans—timbrally perfect and “larger rhythm” in terms of musical continuity. The two purely not acknowledged in the liner notes—that exist on the instrumental movements—Dances of the Ancient Earth and recording. Ghost Dance—are dance-interludes rather than commentaries The founding of Orchestra 2001 in 1998 gave me the on the texts. These two pieces, together with the third song, opportunity to bring a great deal of new music by a great many subtitled “Dance of the Sacred Life-Cycle” (which contains a composers to a public that I think is just now beginning to rising-falling ostinato bolero rhythm in the drums), can be thirst for more adventuresome programming. George’s music performed by a solo dancer. has been a staple of our programs for ten years, and George The vocal style in the cycle ranges from the virtuosic to the himself has accompanied us on several European tours. In intimately lyrical, and in my conception of the work I very America, George Crumb is a highly respected composer of much had in mind Jan DeGaetani’s enormous technical and classical music, admired by many who have followed the timbral flexibility. Perhaps the most characteristic vocal effect development of contemporary music since the 1960s. But in in Ancient Voices is produced by the mezzo-soprano singing a Europe, especially Eastern Europe, George is a cultural hero, a kind of fantastic vocalise (based on purely phonetic sounds) star on whom people look with awe, almost a god-like figure into an amplified piano, thereby producing a shimmering aura for young composers. We have had some wonderful of echoes. The inclusion of a part for boy soprano seemed the adventures on these trips with George (and sometimes his wife best solution for those passages in the text where Lorca clearly Liz) in our midst. Probably the most memorable was our implies a child’s voice.