Guest Speakers:
Andrea Fowler
Kyle Johnson
Jerrod Reetz
Location: Humanities 2441
George Crumb and Jan
DeGaetani: The Composer-Performer Relationship as a Pedagogical Tool
(Andrea Fowler):
The collaboration between composer George Crumb and singer
Jan DeGaetani resulted in several chamber compositions in the 1970s that led to
the specialization of extended vocal technique in the American musical canon. Crumb’s
Ancient Voices of Children (1970) is
rarely performed today. The composition’s strong connection to the original
performer combined with the disappearance of Ancient Voices from the common performance and historical repertory
study creates an intimidating environment for modern performers. Through an
examination of the performance history of Ancient
Voices, today’s musicians receive a glimpse into the collaboration between
Crumb and DeGaetani – a relationship that resulted in several additional
chamber works. By delving into the composition’s history, and studying the individual
elements of the larger work, composers and performers can rediscover this
landmark of American music. This discovery can illuminate strategies for
presentation in both the concert and lecture hall, or provide a possible model
for future composer-performer collaboration.
This trio of papers demonstrates Crumb’s connection to trends
within America’s high fidelity recording environment, the composer-performer
relationships of the post-war avant-garde, and the queer subtext of poetry.
This panel presentation also seeks to highlight each step in the realization of
Crumb’s music – from text setting to performer relationships to recording while
providing platforms for pedagogical discovery and exploration of Crumb’s
influence across diverse networks.
Contemporary Notoriety: An
Exploration of George Crumb’s Early Success through Recordings (Kyle
Johnson):
As a
result of musicians who (naturally) maintain the idea that live performance
plays the most vital role in preserving classical music, the role of recorded
music (an industry that has multiple times more consumers than the live concert
circuit) is often taken for granted or forgotten entirely in the historical pedagogy
surrounding contemporary classical music. In 1971, Acoustic Research Inc.
partnered with Deutsche Grammaphon in a LP release of George Crumb's four books
of Madrigals. This record, along with Nonesuch's Ancient
Voices of Children, demonstrated a multiplicity in the American audio
market that was available to composers in the mid-late twentieth century – that
is, the listenership of one company entirely contrasted that of the other. The
differences in target demographic and clientele, via these two companies,
directly corresponded to Crumb’s success through recordings. By framing his
early career this way, pedagogues are offered a greater understanding of why
his music has a place in the historical canon of contemporary American music.
Engaging Musical Text Settings with Queer Theory:
"Queering" George Crumb's Ancient
Voices of Children and Apparition (Jerrod Reetz):
By
engaging with Queer Theory, educators and students alike can learn the
importance of “queering” music – as musicologist Philip Brett stated, “[it]
allows us to uncover what we generally repress in thinking about our experience
of music: our emotional attachments to music, our needs met by music, our
accommodations of society through music, our voices, our bodies.” Queer Theory is a field of
post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the
combined fields of queer studies and women's studies, which includes both queer
readings of texts and the theorization of “queerness” itself. American
composer George Crumb set poetry with queer subtext for his works Ancient
Voices of Children (1970) and Apparition: Elegiac Songs and Vocalises
for Soprano and Amplified Piano (1979). Although the texts Crumb set for
these works never explicitly reference homosexuality, fragmented texts written
by Federico García Lorca and
Walt Whitman were used. A critical analysis of the queer subtext within the
poetry Crumb set to music aids the reader and listener in fully understanding
the “queerness” of the music. An engagement with Actor-Network Theory (ANT)
further aids in the investigation of the network
surrounding Crumb, Whitman, Lorca, and the song cycles. This trio of papers
demonstrates Crumb’s connection to trends within America’s high fidelity
recording environment, the composer-performer relationships of the post-war
avant-garde, and the queer subtext of poetry. This panel presentation also
seeks to highlight each step in the realization of Crumb’s music – from text
setting to performer relationships to recording, while providing platforms for
pedagogical discovery and exploration of Crumb’s influence across diverse
networks.
Posts
