Be warned that this may be boring to most.
Before I came to CU, I had never so much as heard the name George Crumb. When I got here, I saw posters and heard advertisements everywhere that had his name all over it. I still had absolutely no clue who he was. This week, I found out more than I wanted to.
George Crumb is one of the most influential American composers in the 20th century. He writes what I would call typical 20th century music. I don't know a lot about typical 20th century music, but what I do know is this: it's not what a person generally thinks of when they hear the word "music." It's just strange stuff. That statement brings about an argument about what the definition of music really is, but I don't want to get into that argument. ...Anywho...
Crumb taught at CU Boulder from 1959-1964, during which time, he composed a few of his most famous early works. In October, he turns 80. One of the staff in the College of Music Office is one of the foremost experts in Crumb compositions. All of these elements culminated in the "George Crumb at 80 Music Festival." It's been a 4-day event featuring master's classes, convocations, pre-concert lectures, concerts, musical premieres, and receptions, and the College of Music has been abuzz about it. Literally, you could not go anywhere without seeing or hearing about the Crumb Festival.
Overall, I'd say that the festival has had a mixed reception. The faculty has especially liked him, and there are some students (I would guess mostly theory and composition students) who were impressed (and maybe obsessed), but many people who I talked to were not, including myself. Why?
The music, in my opinion, is weird. It's very atonal (without a melody), and it's hard to find a beat. The scores are intense (here is an example, and it's relatively normal compared to some, like this one), and include pages upon pages of notes about how Crumb wants the pieces to be played and methods to use to make the 'music' sound the way he wants it. Oftentimes, the music sounds like screeches, or completely random noise.
That being said, there are a few good things to be said about Crumb and his music for sure. One is the thing that makes him most famous as a composer: originality. He was incredibly innovative in music-making methods, asking performers to do things that no one had before: whispering into their instruments, playing violins like guitars, playing cymbals with the bow from a violin, playing the strings inside of the piano, etc., etc., etc. And I must say, to see that type of performance in real life was very interesting to me. Also, seeing the concerts live gives the listener the ability to really see those innovations.
The thing that will forever grate me is that in my opinion, most of the music isn't that enjoyable. It definitely takes some getting used to, and I don't want to have to listen to enough of it to get used to it. It's just difficult to listen to an hour and a half of this stuff:
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