Crumb Round the Mountain

by Peter Burwasser

It was a fine idea to pair the premiere of George Crumb’s latest edition of his American songbook, A Journey Beyond Time: A Cycle of African-American Spirituals for Voice, Percussion Quartet and Amplified Piano, with a performance by an actual gospel ensemble. The splendidly entertaining Duke Ellington School of the Arts Show Choir, directed by Samuel Bonds, nearly stole the show with their robust yet precise, choreographed renditions of a group of beloved spirituals. However, the presentation might have been more effective if the choir preceded Crumb’s music. This would have enhanced and elucidated the composer’s extraordinary deconstruction and extravagant reassembly of this most familiar American music.

It is too tempting to conjure an image of old Professor Crumb in his laboratory, the poor old spirituals laid out on his table, as he attaches electrodes and buttons to their simple shapes, then brings them to life as Frankenstein music. But George Crumb is no cackling mad scientist. The West Virginia native, who still speaks with a slight drawl, grew up with this music. By every turn of his arrangements, it is clear that his intention is to draw out and amplify emotional and dramatic components that are already there, as he did so memorably in his settings of the poetry of Lorca. The amplification is both figurative and truly electronic; Crumb employs a huge percussion battery and his famous amplified piano. Thus, "Joshua Fit De Battle Ob Jerico" becomes viscerally apocalyptic, and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" takes on a Freudian emotional complexity. In a particularly astute touch, the opening notes of "Go Down, Moses" are slightly transposed to form the motif of the "Dies Irae," used by so many European composers to express a quality of biblical wrath.

As with the first songbook in this cycle, which arranged Appalachian folksongs, the question arises as to what extent Crumb's powerful soundscape smothers the music rather than enhances it. There are so many familiar sounds in this music for veteran Crumb fans that it is possible to imagine the composer reaching into his stylebook to attach old formulas to new music. But of course, the same could also have been said of Mozart, Mahler, or virtually every other composer who has ever lived. George Crumb happens to have one of the most distinctive musical signatures of any living composer, and so it is easier to make this charge. This cycle has all of the markings of an instant classic, and so the discussion will surely be continued with future performances. It can almost go without saying that the performance by Orchestra 2001 was superb, but it shouldn't. These musicians, under James Freeman's devoted leadership, are the Crumb ensemble of our time, and Barbara Ann Martin was the hauntingly effective vocal soloist.

Orchestra 2001,

Nov. 15, Trinity Center