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American Music
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VICTORIA ADAMENKO
Research Forum, The Organ Encyclopedia, the European Journal for Semiotic Studies,
and Semiotica 2001, and she has given papers in Helsinki, Seattle, Montreal, and
elsewhere.
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It did not take long for traditional pitch-class set analysts to come to
Crumb's defense and to demonstrate his ability to integrate and rigorously treat his materials.5 The results of these analyses are helpful, but
they may be even more beneficial for a fuller comprehension of Crumb's
world if combined with a broader cultural approach. I suggest that several "channels of mythification" are detectable in Crumb's work-numerology, syncretism, symbolization, archaism, ritualism, and universalizing of the structural components of language and formal design. These
"channels" are interrelated; they frequently overlap, and they certainly
resist being defined by a single "-ism" term. Mythification penetrates
different aspects of Crumb's creativity: philosophy, aesthetics, the choice
of poetic text, musical language, form, and notation. For instance, the
tendency for symbolization in Crumb's aesthetics is connected to his
"symbolic notation," which, in its turn, relates to the cyclic and symmetrical designs of form, dynamics, and pitch organization.
Crumb's emphasis on the "universals of music" calls for an application
of Claude Levi-Strauss's analysis of myth, while the composer's reliance
on the symbolic and the "pre-reflective" archetypes may be viewed as
a manifestation of twentieth-century "neo-mythologism." The latter is
presented in the studies of the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics, lin-
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326
Adamenko
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via mythic symbols, established a bridge between the archaic and the
modern, the collective and the individual. Jung argued that various
numerological structures and symbols often used in myths "not only
express order, they create it,"16 following the ultimate goal of creation
myths. Meletinsky emphasized that a "conscious appropriation of an
unconscious discovery" is characteristic of new-mythologism; as he
concluded:
diated influence of Jung's ideas on Crumb are possible, since the mandala
and other Jungian archetypes are also discernable in Lorca's poetry--one
of the acknowledged sources for Crumb's own poetics.20 Crumb, from
his position as a late modernist composer, expressed a longing for the
archetypal. Consider his well-known comment about Lorca's poetry:
sounds of the wind and the sea. These ur-concepts are embodied
in a language which is primitive and stark, but which is capable of
infinitely subtle nuance.21
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328
Adamenko
draws more from an idiosyncratic worldview than actual mythic narratives or characters: "My music is not programmatic in the nineteenthcentury sense of this word. [The use of myths] is not literal, [but is] a
part of my thinking."24 In the 1997 interview, Crumb portrayed himself
the greatest books ever written. ... There is another writer, Bulfinch,
who has a book called World Mythology, which I read, and looked
through some other books by him.25
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is a universalizing gesture.
Crumb's predilection for symmetry, which he himself acknowledged,27
in combination with his idiosyncratic fondness for the "child theme" and
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330
Adamenko
sance and the Baroque; at the time I used this kind of notation I did not
know any historical [circular] scores."33 This is, indeed, surprising, given
bolism of a circle, only the first madrigal, printed on the cover page, is
presented as a circle. Nevertheless, the mythologem of a circle is exploited
Vie
44 1 o #
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year, Ladislav Kupkovic (" ... "for bass clarinet or cello solo). Despite that,
Crumb insists that he reinvented the idea of circular notation in his own
way: "I knew Stockhausen's Refrain before I did any of my own circular
works, but his work was not a direct influence on me. I use a different
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332
Adamenko
SOW, eaw?r
kriur
'd
matd
. .. . . .. :
/ ~ ZA2 -i;J
II.EM , I , -L- fL d lr i l , ,'
1-;%.W
;I "';"*Ibi~r
" SACRED kOM)
LIFE-CYCLE"a..,[:/:...t.;
,,-
--
Y_.
icil~lm
M4
- -:ul?~ucu-c fkr? .- .1 , ,!
AW
4044
catem
40& "IfPW4*ftfP"! w
j cii)~i
~?i,.-
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ing for his voice," implies the one-to-one relationship of voice to soul.
This voice/soul is silent:
I do not want it for speaking with:
I will make a ring of it
of eternal recurrence and "echo," the idea that after someone's death his
or her voice continues to live.46 Consider, for example, the Greek myth of
Echo, or Polidor, whose voice told the story of his murder after he died.47
Like the boy "Echo" in Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, Lorca's child has
"come from so far away," "from the ridge of hard frost." The motive of the
the cricket or a cicada personified the deity of the dying afternoon (for
example, the Greek myth of the immortal ever-old Tithonus). The next
line of the text (also circular), "Each afternoon in Granada, a child dies each
afternoon" (emphasis mine) is linked to the symbolism of both the cricket
and the ring from the first verse. A cricket that makes music at sunset is
associated with afternoon (allegorically, the afternoon of life, or old age).
life begins. The circle is now closed. While at the beginning of Crumb's
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334
Adamenko
text arrangement the young boy tries to find his voice in the realm of the
"old" cricket, at the end there is a request "to give me back my ancient
soul of a child"-an inversion of the initial "young/old" opposition. The
symbolism of the whole text proves so pregnant with meaning, including
references to known mythic motives, that it supercedes itself as a literary
movement, Crumb chose only these two lines that contain an inversion
(found in the translation of the entire sixteen-line poem Gacela V (Del
niiio muetro), from De Divan del Tamarit of 1934):
Crumb chose these lines as a subtitle for the movement. While inversion
structure presents circularity in its closed and singular form, refrainbased structures express the idea of circularity in a different fashion-as
an open and a repetitive cycle. According to the composer's instructions
for the score, "both Spanish and English texts should be printed as part
of the program notes." The corresponding lines of the Spanish original
contain a refrain-like repetition:
repeated three times, accompanied by an ostinato figure on the percussion. Clearly, Crumb identifies the idea of circularity with the idea of
repetition. Notably, Lorca's poems-the source of Crumb's inspiration
for many of his works-are, in general, rich with repetitions, refrains,
and symmetrical "concentric" inversions. One example is found in Gazela X (De la huida). Crumb borrowed the first five lines for the second
movement of Ancient Voices of Children. In Lorca's poem, lines 4 and 5
reappear in inversion as 14 and 15:
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c. E ndingpofmthe-ast-movemen
Soy ;st.
O4.
c. Ending of the last movement
(Mart d;stknt)
A-1~-
X&-- 0-~
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336
Adamenko
The last movement contains the recurring phrase of the oboe; this
constitutes a recapitulation of somewhat similar material in the first
movement, in the section Dances of the Ancient Earth. Thus Crumb forms
concentric circles on the macro level of structure. Example 4 shows a cer-
Used by permission
m.1
m.2
m.3
m.4 .
m.5
B 123
C123
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episode (Example 5a), which contains six chords; of these six, chords
one and six are identical in pitch content (Example 5b), as are chords
two and five (Example 5c). Chords three and four (Example 5d) each
contain two tritones a half-step apart from each other, another instance
of symmetry.
Though symmetry and circularity of structure are present in the other
movements, the central movement-the one that employs circular notation-is most distinctive in this respect. Here, not only the pitch materials,
f~
CYM LIXIS
14 fGL
m ..- - (I=?c. ,,;b-.)
-3-.I
8 .....~
borbcrS
(.50o)
"
-- -- ---- - --
I,,
'Piano
ctre
c....
<'Pe - Sempre) r
...
..
.....
...
..
..
4%FI
-d
=1
tp.cl~r
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338
Adamenko
b. Chords 1 and 6
c. Chords 2 and 5
d. Chords 3 and 4
"X;N
the composer's labels Al, A2, and the like. This second type recalls ritual
reenactment of the precedent, repeated each time with modifications.
The composer employs varied rather than literal repetition, applying the
same principle to the form of the whole third movement. He repeats the
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..Ostin
" o.?-O:
- "..............................................----t.mpo d. .e , N9
......t
,,.;eat7*
-__.=oic -?I
a.=, *-4? "0 rlrrU-?
Ku l
The connotation of wholeness-associated with both the mythologem of the circle and the mythologem of the world tree-reveals itself
on the level of pitch organization as all twelve pitch classes are present
here. Crumb creates a sound world where all available "niches" of the
chromatic universe of music are present and co-exist within one short
movement. Example 7 contains a chart demonstrating this. The numbers in the left column indicate segments, or phrases of music that are
divided by rests or by means of "graphic notation" in Crumb's score (as
he does not use standard measures). The pitch classes that-due to their
frequency, prolonged rhythmic value or accent-function as local tonal
centers within each segment are notated in the chart as whole notes. The
chart, read from top to bottom, corresponds to the temporal progress of
the piece. The connecting lines between identical pitch classes indicate
their continuity. The recurring pitch classes provide inner coherence to
this picture of chromatic "totality." Crumb never uses all twelve pitches
simultaneously; rather he utilizes various segments of the chromatic
scale.
In Ghost Dance, two interlocking tritones (A-D sharp and G-C sharp)
occur in various forms throughout the piece. The pitch organization
in this movement may be described as permutations of the fixed elements-a whole step, a tritone, and a major third-as a single idea. This
uniformity is in line with traditional mythic thought, which perceived
the world as made from a finite number of elements (such as fire, wa-
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340
Adamenko
Example 7. A chart demonstrating the twelve pitch classes used in Dance of the
Sacred Life-Cycle.
1
B1
B2
123
m.2
123
m.3
ending
forms. For example, sevenths, ninths, and tritones appear in Dance of the
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m.1
m.9
m.1
>L -reprise
M.7 M.7
m.3
M.7
m.3 "
M.7
m.4
M.7
m.5 n
m.6,
.
E12
El. piano
'em.9
and A).
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342
Adamenko
them."54
Dolly Kessner claimed that number 7 (represented by seven halfsteps, or a perfect fifth) here symbolically represents "God-Life," while
13 (half-steps, or a minor ninth) stands for "Devil-Death."55 On the other
hand, Crumb himself thus decoded his association between the number
7 and the tritone: "In Black Angels I used a tritone, which corresponds to
].2-'
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of "7 times 13 and 13 times 7" of the last. How is this opposition realized
note (MM = 60). Thus each labeled number indicates duration in seconds,
of 13 seconds each in the first segment (marked "disembodied, incorporeal"). Two of these overlap only slightly, with the overall duration
of the segment resulting in a little less than 39. The similar brackets of
the second segment (marked "vibrant, intense!") carry the sacramental
numbers 7-3-4-7 (totaling in 21 seconds), which overlap by one group
(= 1 second) with the final segment. The latter consists of three slightly
overlapping 13-second groups. Thus, adding <39, 20, and <39, we obtain
a number that is less than 98, which approximates to the number 91 of
the first movement. This gives a justification to Crumb's labeling both
movements 1 and 13 in a similar yet oppositional fashion ("13 times 7
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Example 10. George Crumb, Black Angels, opening fragment. ? 1972 C. E Peters Corporation. All rights r
Vibrant. intense! JG60
, (Sempre ; m.) _ _ _ _
irpr e soulj a
':
5F
uh.)
3
ISI
ocd
L5j
?r
if ~ I
MMMMprLS
Hsu Y-l w-tub'?
4
73
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'
133
.__. - . . . ..
pm
_W
IW'13
?113
..-'-00---.-- - -- ...
'I-Q
1+.--I ...._ 41
-f-Ip~ p~rgr~t;
!
LFF
tp+"--
-~
___p~
___.
J .. . .. . . . .-
Ity
no
r-?VQr
i,.i*
q?;16
ch,,- ,i rt Sa hi .
.......----
13
and 7 times 13" versus "7 times 13 and 13 times 7"), based on the polarities of their inner structures. While there were no 13-second groups in
the first movement, in movement 13, on the contrary, Crumb uses many
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346
Adamenko
are considered the most sacred in many world mythologies, where they
possess universal meanings of dynamics (odd number 3), stability, four
points of a compass (even number 4), and the union of the opposites in
number 7.
The central movement (7), which Crumb designates "the numerological basis of the entire work,"58 corresponds to the "axis of symmetry"
role of number 7 in the simple row of 13 numbers:
The puzzling subtitle for this movement combines the numbers 7 and 13
in a repetitive manner: "7 times 7 and 13 times 13." The movement opens
with a tritone in each of the parts repeated 7 times. In the context hinted
(Example 12).
In movement 3 (marked "13 over 7"), 13 high-pitched notes taken as
harmonics appear after and (in terms of pitch) over a 7-second drone.
In movement 5, the formula "13 times 7" refers to the number of occur-
these two intervals recur many times throughout this movement both
harmonically and melodically, including the opening sonority. Thus the
Example 12. George Crumb, Black Angels, a rhythmic group in the first violin
part of movement 2.
.13
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ethos.
Syncretism
Critics have long noted Crumb's desire to create a synthesis of diverse
media and stylistic components, comparing it with Wagner's Gesamkunstwerk;61 however, his tendency toward the integration of diverse
elements has never been perceived as a tool for mythification-that is,
as an attempt to return to the mythic "whole" and undivided state. His
syncretism of artistic media is apparent in, among other things, his tribute
parallels the text (selectively fashioned by the composer)-visual in parallel with verbal. In addition, music, which is structured accordingly, also
visual (for the viewers of the "circle music" in the calligraphy of the
scores). The graphic notation may be viewed as Crumb's version of the
tone-painting tradition-the visual in association with formal design
that together correspond to the meaning of the verbal text. This is most
evident, perhaps, in Eleven Echoes ofAutumn, where the "broken arches"
are depicted visually. Crumb's fascination with syncretism explains this
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348
Adamenko
a role in this.63
Pousseur's Phonemes pour Cathy (1966); and more. The trend developed
from the work of the Second Viennese School composers, Scriabin, and
early twentieth-century avant-garde composers.65 Crumb's voice in this
chorus is distinguishable thanks to its semantic transparency and openly
mythic undertones. His case serves as a model for interpretation in the
examination of the mythic babbling of the New Vocalism.66 Crumb especially seems to restate the mythic function of the recollection of origins
As Spitz has remarked, the child from Ancient Voices "is too young to form
words."67 The primitive babbling may be interpreted as standing for the
childhood of mankind, or the early prereflective stage of culture. Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) compared the mythological epoch to childhood
in the history of humankind. From this perspective, it also makes sense
to emphasize, as Spitz does as a psychoanalyst, that in Ancient Voices of
Children "ancient" is equated with "the earliest in life."68 Thus Crumb's
meaningless syllables serve the purpose of recollecting the origins. While
for an archaic myth-maker, mythic time served this function, for Crumb,
music itself is the mythic place of origin: "I feel intuitively that music
must have been the primitive cell from which language, science, and
religion originated."69
Archaism
Leo Normet argued that "archaism and timelessness are inevitable presuppositions for the mythical in music."70 Although the simple act of
incorporating a primitive idiom into a musical work can hardly make
the work "mythic," the interpretation of "the mythic" as "ancient," or
"primary" is justified by the notion of myth as timeless (i.e., first estab-
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from the epigraph to this article). Moreover, critics and colleagues have
commonly characterized Crumb's world as "primeval and atavistic,"71
and his work as "modern music that drips with an ineffable antiquity."72
A manifestation of this is Crumb's use of the timeless "universals of
modern reactualization of a proto-structure, a sample of how the timeless idea of symmetry is realized in our own time.
Some scholars claim that the search for the "universals of music" is
Evening").
In the interview at Rutgers, Crumb pointed to the link between the
archaic and the mythic in this exchange. I asked him, "You have a piece
entitled Myth.77 Did you think of any particular myth, or does it refer to
myth in general?"
His response: "I was thinking of ancient, prehistoric music, the primeval sounds like the droning sounds."78
Here, Crumb seems to perceive the drone as one of the archaic layers
that still survive in musical culture; this parallels the way in which mythic
thought is still a part of contemporary culture. In other words, it is mu-
sic-in certain natural forms, such as drones-that still carries the quality
of being "ancient" or "primeval," and thus assumes mythic qualities. The
issue of the "origins of music" inevitably rises here.79 Although it can
hardly ever be proven, droning is presumably one of the earliest forms
of music and thus can assist Crumb in his quest for mythification, for
the musical embodiments of "primitive" or "ancient" qualities. Through
archaism, as well as through syncretism and numerology, music, along
with the other arts, plays a role in the process of mythification, providing
artistic proof for expressions of primal "truth."
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350
Adamenko
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to the composer for the interview quoted in the epigraph, the complete text
NOTES
2. Robert Moevs, review of "Music for a Summer Evening" (Makrokosmos III), Musical
Quarterly 62 (1976): 302; . Robert Evett, review of Makrokosmos I, Washington Star-News,
1973.
3. Questioned about his circular notation, Crumb replied, "Every composer should be
permitted an occasional flight of whimsy!"; from "Interview: George Crumb / Robert
Shuffett," in George Crumb: Profile of a Composer, ed. Don Gillespie (New York: C. F. Peters,
1986), 37.
Garland, 1998).
7. On the role of repetitiveness in archaic mythic texts, see, in particular, The Naked Man,
Introduction to a Science of Mythology 4 (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 673.
8. Cited in Pandora Hopkins's translation from her critique of Levi-Strauss's theory, "The
Homology of Music and Myth: Views of Levi-Strauss on Musical Structure," Ethnomusicology 21 (1977): 252.
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18. Plato in Phaedo refers to Socrates' testimony that myths are to be sung as healing
charms. David A. White notes this in Myth and Metaphysics in Plato's "Phaedo" (Selinsgrove,
21. From the commentary to the recording: Elektra Nonesuch 979149-2, 1975.
22. Carl Jung, "Approaching the Unconscious," in Man and His Symbols (New York:
Ferguson, 1964), 55.
23. Interview at RU, 305-6.
24. Ibid., 307.
25. Ibid., 306-7.
26. Ibid. In a phone conversation on March 14, 2003, Crumb confirmed that he has never
seen an Indian Ghost Dance that has served as a prototype for this movement, and added,
"I do that a lot-using something that I have never seen myself, but read about it."
27. Mark Alburger, "Day of the Vox Crumbae: An Ancient, Angelic Interview with the
Phantom Gondolier," Twentieth-Century Music 4 (1997): 16.
28. Carl Jung, Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice (New York: Pantheon Books,
1968), 138.
29. Carl Jung, "The Psychology of the Child Archetype," in Carl Gustav Jung and Carl
Ker6nyi, Essays on a Science of Mythology (1949; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1971), 83.
32. Carl Jung, Mandala Symbolism, Collected Works of C. G. Jung 9, pt. I (Princeton. N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1972), 4-5.
33. Phone conversation, Feb. 16, 1999.
34. See Bartolome de Pareja, Musica Practica, ed. Clemente Terni (Madrid: Joyas Bibliograficas, 1982), 294.
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352
Adamenko
45. Liner notes to Ancient Voices of Children, no. 979149-2, Electra Nonesuch, 1975.
46. The echo motif has always been very popular in music; one of the more recent
examples can be found in Babbitt's Philomel (1964). In Ancient Voices of Children, the echo
effect is also prominent. Crumb wrote, "Perhaps the most characteristic vocal effect in
Ancient Voices is produced by the mezzo-soprano singing a kind of fantastic vocalise ...
into an amplified piano, thereby producing a shimmering aura of echoes." Notes to a CD
recording of Ancient Voices of Children, no. 979149-2, Electra Nonesuch, 1975.
47. "Polidor," in Mifologicheskii slovar [The dictionary of mythology], ed. Eleazar Meletinsky (Moscow: Sovetskaya Enziklopedia, 1991), 445.
48. This archetype also relates to the group of myths about the heavenly world where
the angels or the holy youths live. In general, the mythologem of a child derives from the
myths about the holy child as forefather of mankind. On the mythic aspects of "ChildSymbol" in Lorca see chapter 3 of Rupert C. Allen, The Symbolic World of Federico Garcia
Lorca (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972), 159-73.
49. See Robert Lima, "Immolations: Rites of Sacrifice on the Stages of Federico Garcia
Lorca," Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 15 (2001): 33-48; see also his "Toward the
Dionysiac: Pagan Elements and Rites in Yerma," Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 4
(1990): 63-82.
50. In the myths of Tukano and Aravaks, the main male deity, Yurupari, was burned,
and from his ashes grew a palm tree. From the bark of that tree, flutes and trumpets were
made, which preserved Yurupari's voice. Mifologicheskii slovar [The dictionary of mythology], 647.
51. Measure number indications are not based on bar lines; I chose to indicate as measures
those segments of the score that are separated by the breaks in the staff. Letter indications
of other segments (A123, B123, and C123) are present in Crumb's score. Two segments of
notation (harp and electric piano, "measure" six and section E 1, 2) are excluded from the
chart, because rapid glissandi along with percussion do not allow for actual pitch perception.
52. Crumb analyst Steven Chatman summarized an established view on Crumb's foremost concern for sonority writing that "Crumb seems less concerned with any elaborate
development of pitch and harmony," and that, in some works, "vertical or harmonic analysis tends to be unprofitable"; "The Element of Sound in 'Night of the Four Moons,'" in
George Crumb, ed. Gillespie, 63.
53. The composer's own expression from the Notes to Makrokosmos I.
54. Interview at RU, 304-5.
55. Dolly Kessner, "Structural Coherence in Late Twentieth-Century Music," Ph.D. diss.,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1992, 114.
56. Interview at RU, 304-5.
57. Phone conversation, June 5, 2001.
58. See Crumb's footnote to the diagram in the score.
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62. The term instrumental theater appears as early as in 1966 in an essay by Mauricio
Kagel, one of the phenomenon's principal proponents, and it has become widespread
in European literature on the music of the second half of the twentieth century. See Neue
Raum, Neue Musik: Gedanken zum Instrumentalen Theater, in Im Zenit der Moderne: Geschichte
und Dokumentation in vier Banded. Die Internationalen Ferienkurse fir Neue Musik Darmstadt,
music constituted the most important activity of his life. The two arts were closely related
to each other throughout his career"; The Tragic Myth, ix.
64. Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Expositions and Developments (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1981), 121.
65. Scriabin used a vocalization of syllables for mixed choir, "E-a-kho-a," in the culmination of Prometheus. Glenn Watkins, who justly regards many diverse works that employ
"nonsense" syllables as one trend (the term New Vocalism is attributed to Berio), offers a
guide to research in this field: Soundings. Music in the Twentieth Century (New York: Schirmer,
1988), 605-22.
66. The idea of words and music being interrelated through myth has been discussed
both theoretically and in application to a particular style. See, for example, Jean-Paul
Madou, "Langue, mythe, musique: Rousseau, Nietzsche, Mallarme, Levi-Strauss," in Litterature et musique, ed. Raphael Celis (Bruxelles: Facultes Universitaires Saint-Lois, 1982),
75-109. Norbet Dressen acknowledged the special role of myth in Luciano Berio's approach
to text in Sprache und Musik bei Luciano Berio: Untersuchungen zu seinen Vokalkompositionen
69. Oliver Daniel, "George Crumb," brochure (New York: Broadcast Music, 1975), final
page.
71. Richard Wernick, "George Crumb: Friend and Musical Colleague," in Profile of a
Composer, ed. Gillespie, 69.
72. Jamake Highwater, in Soho Weekly News, April 7, 1977, cited in Profile of a Composer,
Bart6k's opera Bluebeard's Castle (1911) might have served as an origin for the arch forms
of the Fourth String Quartet (1928) and the Second Piano Concerto (1931).
74. See "The Necessity of and Problems with a Universal Musicology," in "Universals
in Music," a chapter in The Origins of Music, ed. Nils L. Wallin et al. (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 2001): 473-80.
75. Alburger, "Day of the Vox Crumbae," 16. Bart6k initiated his special "night music"
genre in Musiques Nocturnes from the Out of Doors suite (1926), which involves chromatic
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354
Adamenko
Orchestra; a specific example of "insect music" is "From the Diary of a Fly" no. 142 from
vol. 6 of Mikrokosmos (1926-39).
76. Rupert C. Allen, The Symbolic World of Federico Garcia Lorca (Albuquerque: University
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