He is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music where he earned the degrees Bachelor of Music and Master of Music, studying with world renowned Ukrainian-American violinist Oleh Krysa. the Kronos Quartet’s David Harrington talks about Black Angels and the way the piece became a catalyst for the founding of the Kronos.Ī native of Upstate New York, Timothy Judd has been a member of the Richmond Symphony violin section since 2001.Crumb: Black Angels, Kronos Quartet Amazon.Threnody I: Night of the Electric Insects (tutti) Then, in you feel inspired, please share your perceptions of the music in the comment thread below. The second movement opens with a ghostly remembrance of the second movement of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden.Ĭlose your eyes and listen. Later, you’ll hear quotes of the Dies irae, the ancient chant of the dead we explored in Wednesday’s post. The first movement opens with something akin to swarming insects which become a prominent motive throughout the piece. It’s a special characteristic.īlack Angels is set in three sections, Departure, Absence, and Return. The divisions within the movements make up “Thirteen images from the Dark Land.” Structurally, the piece is filled with numerological symbolism. You can sometimes hear sounds from the mouths of the river. Say on a quiet summer evening, sounds from the other side of the river waft over, you see, because there are hills on both sides. I have always thought the echoing sense of my music is distilled really from the sense of hearing I developed there…it’s haunting, you know. These may be the most frightening moments in the piece. In an interview with Edward Strickland, Crumb draws interesting parallels between his perception of sound and the remote Appalachian valleys of his native West Virginia: There is a fascinating spacial dimension at work in Black Angels. Occasionally, we get the unsettling sense that we’re hearing distant, indistinguishable echoes- the kinds of vague, far-off sounds that make us wonder if our ears are playing tricks on us. As the piece unfolds, these disparate elements become characters in a mysterious and inexplicable drama.
The score calls for spoken words (whispering, chanting, and counting in a variety of languages), two suspended tam-tam gongs, and the ethereal tones of crystal glasses. The composer asks that the volume be raised “to the threshold of pain.” The string quartet steps halfway into the percussion section, frequently employing a wide array of nonconventional sounds and tone colors. Even Crumb, who lists Bartók, Debussy, Mahler, and Messiaen among his influences, does not seem to be sure of their origin.īlack Angels inhabits an electronically-amplified, contemporary sound world. Yet the strange, disturbing voices which haunt this music seem to transcend any one historical moment. Completed in March, 1970, the piece has been associated with the apocalyptic zeitgeist of the Vietnam era. 1929), pulls us into a terrifying, nightmarish soundscape. There were terrifying things in the air… they found their way into Black Angels.īlack Angels, a work for “electric string quartet” by American composer George Crumb (b.
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