Born in 1929 in Charleston (West Virginia, usa), he studied at the Illinois University with Eugene Weigel, in Berliner Hochschule für Musik with Boris Blacher and at the Michigan University with Ross Lee Finney. He received the scholarships of many foundations: Elizabeth Croft in Berkshire Music Centre (1955), Fulbright (1955–56), Rockefeller (1964), Guggenheim (1967 and 1973), Fromm (1973) and Ford (1976), as well as the National Institute for Arts and Letters (1967). In the years 1964–65 he collaborated as a composer-in-residence with the Buffalo Center for the Creative and Performing Arts. Since 1965 until his retirement in 1997 Crumb was a Professor at the Pennsylvania University in Philadelphia.
Crumb’s honours include the Pulitzer Prize (for Echoes of Time and the River; 1968), the Koussevitzky Recording Award (1971), the Cannes Classical Award (1998) and a Grammy Award for the best contemporary composition (Star-Child, 2001).
George Crumb is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an honorary member of Deutsche Akademie der Künste, as well as
a doctor honoris causa of six universities.
In 2004 he received the title of ‘Composer of the Year’ from the magazine ‘Musical America’.

Selected works: Three Early Songs for voice and piano (1947), Sonata for Cello (1955), Variazioni for large orchestra (1959), Madrigals, Books I–II (1965), Eleven Echoes of Autumn (Echoes I) for violin, alto flute, clarinet and piano (1966), Echoes of Time and the River (Echoes II) for orchestra (1967), Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death for baritone and amplified instrumental ensemble (1968), Night of the Four Moons for alto, flute, banjo, electric cello and percussion (1969), Madrigals, Books III–IV (1969), Black Angels (Images I) for electric string quartet (1970), Ancient Voices of Children for mezzo-soprano, treble and ensemble (1970), Vox Balaenae for electric flute, electric cello and amplified piano (1971), Makrokosmos, Volume I–II for amplified piano (1972–73), Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III) for two amplified pianos and percussion (1974), Dream Sequence (Images II) for violin, cello, piano, percussion and glass harmonica (1976), Star-Child for soprano, children voices, male choir, bells and large orchestra (1977), Celestial Mechanics (Makrokosmos IV) for amplified piano (four hands) (1979), String Trio (1982), Pastoral Drone for organ (1982), Processional for piano (1983), The Sleeper for soprano and piano (1984), An Idyll for the Misbegotten (Images III) for amplified flute and percussion (1986), Federico’s Little Songs for Children for soprano, flutes and harp (1986), Zeitgeist (Tableaux Vivants) for two amplified pianos (1988), Easter Dawning for carillon (1991), Quest for guitar and chamber ensemble (1994), Mundus Canis for guitar and percussion (1998), Unto the Hills for soprano and chamber ensemble (2001), A Journey Beyond Time for soprano and chamber ensemble (2002), Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik for piano (2002), Otherwordly Resonances for two pianos (2003), River of Life for soprano, piano and percussion quartet (2003), Winds of Destiny for soprano, piano and percussion quartet (2004).

An Idyll for the Misbegotten (Images III)
A human-centered view of nature is evident in this nine-minute work for amplified flute and percussion, composed in 1985. ‘I feel that «misbegotten» well describes the fateful and melancholy predicament of the species homo sapiens at the present moment in time’, writes the composer. Mankind has become ever more ‘illegitimate’ in the natural world of plants and animals. The ancient sense of brotherhood with all life-forms (so poignantly expressed in the poetry of St Francis of Assisi) has gradually and relentlessly eroded, and consequently we find ourselves monarchs of a dying world. We share the fervent hope that humankind will embrace anew nature’s ‘moral imperative’.
The theatrical element is paramount in the piece. Crumb suggests, ‘impractically’, that the music be ‘heard from afar, over a lake, on
a moonlit evening in August’. The scoring, employing two of man’s oldest instruments, conjures up a primitive, timeless aura; there is
a brief quotation from Debussy’s Syrinx, interpolated into a passage for the flute that also calls for the performer to speak a few lines by the eighth-century Chinese poet Ssu-K’ung Shu, while still playing the instrument (‘The moon goes down. There are shivering birds and withering grasses.’) Over a pianissississimo tremolo in the bass drum, the flute intones a Pan-like song that gradually grows ever more agitated. Sensing this, the drums respond to the flute’s emotional state; they burst the bonds of the tremolo to punctuate the melodic line in barely controlled outbursts and send the flute skittering along in a flight of flutter-tongued fantasy. The hysteria soon subsides, the drums recede, and at the end nothing is left but the flute, musing softly on
a pair of tritones – the devil’s interval. In George Crumb’s universe, the black angels are never far away.

Michael Walsh
(programme notes in CD booklet, New World Records 357-2)