George Crumb's Black Angels | CIM New Music Ensemble | Cleveland Institute of Music

George Crumb (b. 1929)
Black Angels
(Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) (1970)
Performed on Nov 10, 2019 in celebration of the composer’s ninetieth birthday.

CIM New Music Ensemble
Keith Fitch, director

0:00 Departure
Threnody I: Night of the Electric Insects
Sounds of Bones and Flutes
Lost Bells
Devil-music
Danse Macabre

6:09 Absence
Pavana Lachrymae
Threnody II: Black Angels!
Sarabanda de la Muerte Oscura
Lost Bells (Echo)

12:00 Return
God-music
Ancient Voices
Ancient Voices (Echo)
Threnody III: Night of the Electric Insects

James Thompson, violin
Julian Maddox, violin
Tess Krope, viola
Daniel Blumard, cello

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Black Angels was commissioned by the University of Michigan and is dedicated to the Stanley Quartet. The score is inscribed: “finished on Friday the Thirteenth, March 1970 (in tempore belli).”

The composer has provided the following note for Black Angels:

Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) was conceived as a kind of parable on our troubled contemporary world. The numerous quasi-programmatic allusions in the work are therefore symbolic although the essential polarity – God versus Devil – implies more than a purely metaphysical reality. The image of the “black angel” was a conventional device used by early painters to symbolize the fallen angel.

The underlying structure of Black Angels is a huge arch-like design which is suspended from the three “Threnody” pieces. The work portrays a voyage of the soul. The three stages of this voyage are Departure (fall from grace), Absence (spiritual annihilation), and Return (redemption).

The numerological symbolism of Black Angels, while perhaps not immediately perceptible to the ear, is nonetheless quite faithfully reflected in the musical structure. These “magical” relationships are variously expressed: e.g. in terms of phrase length, groupings of single tones, durations, patterns of repetition, etc. An important pitch element in the work – ascending D-sharp, A – also symbolizes the fateful numbers seven and thirteen. At certain points in the score, there occurs a kind of ritualistic counting in various languages. including German, French, Russian, Hungarian, Japanese, and Swahili.

There are several allusions to tonal music in Black Angels: a quotation from Schubert's “Death and the Maiden” quartet (in the Pavana Lachrymae and also faintly echoed on the last page of the work): an original Sarabanda. which is stylistically synthetic; the sustained B-major tonality of God-music; and several references to the Latin sequence Dies Irae (“Day of Wrath”). The work abounds in conventional musical symbolisms such as the Diabolus in Musica (the interval of the tritone) and the Trillo di Diavolo (the “Devil's trill” after Tartini).

The amplification of the stringed instruments in Black Angels is intended to produce a highly surrealistic effect. This surrealism is heightened by the use of certain unusual string effects; e.g. pedal tones (the intensely obscene sounds of the Devil-music); bowing on the “wrong” side of the strings (to produce the viol-consort effect); trilling on the strings with thimble-capped fingers. The performers also play maracas, tam-tarns, and water-tuned crystal glasses, the latter played with the bow for the “glass-harmonica” effect in God-music.

In a recent interview Crumb stated that “it was only toward the end of the composition of Black Angels that I became aware that this piece had pulled in a lot of the very dark currents that were swimming around during this period. I didn't set out to write an anti-war piece. But at the end of the writing process it struck me – and music can do this – that Black Angels just pulled in the surrounding psychological and emotional atmosphere.

Perhaps it was Crumb’s lack of political intent that gives Black Angels its ability to speak to today's audiences with the same shocking power that it did more than three decades ago. As Crumb said, speaking of Beethoven’s dedication to Napoleon in his “Eroica” Symphony, “it isn’t about creating a piece of propaganda; rather, it’s a human testament.”

© David Starobin
(Courtesy of Bridge Records, Inc.)