George Crumb (b. 1929)
Vox balanae (1971)
Few composers fit the definition of “iconic” better than George Crumb. Born in 1929, Crumb made his reputation in the 1960s and ‘70s as the composer of music that was as forward-thinking and innovative as it was rooted in the past and entrenched in the natural order of things. Like his near-contemporary, György Ligeti, Crumb thoroughly and distinctively repurposed not just old musical forms but also instruments themselves, devising new techniques for playing them and creating a sound world unlike any other. Vox balaenae (Voice of the Whale), Crumb’s extraordinary trio for flute, cello, and piano, demonstrates the best characteristics of his work.
It’s a challenging piece, technically, and also highly theatrical. Crumb calls for all three players to wear masks and for the stage to be awash in deep-blue light. “The masks,” he said, “by effacing the sense of human projection, are intended to represent, symbolically, the powerful, impersonal forces of nature.”
Vox balaenae is cast in three movements, beginning with “Vocalise (…for the beginning of time).” Much of this opening movement is given to the flute, alone. Crumb called it a cadenza and it is certainly an acrobatic showpiece. Perhaps its most striking feature, though, is the instruction for the flautist to sing while playing. This creates an extraordinary affect, primordial, beautiful, and weird all at once.
The middle movement, “Variations on a Sea Theme,” forms Vox balaenae’s dramatic core. The cello plays the theme itself in eerie, artificial harmonics. The tune grows out of just three pitches that will be very important later on: these notes also generate the last movement’s main melody. Its five variations are named after geological eras and each one has a very distinctive quality by which it can be identified. The first, “Archeozoic,” features the cello imitating the call of a seagull while the piano plays murky, glissando runs inside the instrument. The flute and cello engage in a kind of dialogue in the second variation, “Proterozoic,” while the piano accompanies with a mysterious pedal point. “Paleozoic,” the third variation, finally features some fast music, with brighter textures and a strong sense of forward momentum. The fourth variation, “Mesozoic,” continues this trend, with the flute and cello playing a florid, ecstatic melody over and around the demented harpsichord-sounding piano (a sonority achieved by placing a glass bar over a range of strings inside the instrument). The final variation, “Cenozoic,” returns to the uneasy affect of the first part of the piece, with fragments of the first movement reappearing to lead directly into the finale.
As noted above, the primary theme of the last movement, “Sea Nocturne (…for the end of Time),” is built on the first three notes of the “Sea Theme.” Unlike the previous movements, Crumb turns here to a richly diatonic accompaniment for this movement. Throughout, the mood is dreamlike, Crumb fully realizing his depiction of “a larger rhythm of nature” and a sense of time suspended.
© Jonathan Blumhofer
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