The dizzy sixties

WILFRID MELLERS listens again to George Crumb

<< Continued from page 1

The seven trumpets of the Apocalypse are positioned strategically around the auditorium; the Four Horsemen are represented by four drummers playing sixteen tomtoms. As a totality, the 35-minute piece travels and travails from murky insecurity [listen - track 2, 00:00 - 00:40] to the bright light of children's voices, singing monodically or in quasi-pentatonic organum. [Listen - track 6, 02:23 - track 7, 00:24.]

On the evidence of this CD what I now think-and-feel about Crumb's music is much the same as I thought and felt when his bombshell first hit us. The sounds intermittently evoke real MAGIC, which is a rare phenomenon; the experience they offer is stimulating, even at times visionary. Even so, the experience doesn't wear as well as Bach or Beethoven; and the reason for this springs from a deficiency in what used to be called THOUGHT, humankind's most priceless gift. Of course, this doesn't mean that it's a waste of time, only that its staying-power is feeble; it's pertinent to note that the other mature (1988) piece on this disc consists of five 'humoresques' for guitar and percussion, describing the antics of the Crumb-family dogs, under the title of Mundus Canis. [Listen - track 12, 00:00 - 00:39.] The frisky pieces mask amusingly doggy noises and display Crumb's typical, and endearing, empathy with other forms of life. Perhaps it helps that dogs have instincts but don't, in our sense, think very long, or well. The three early songs, for soprano and piano, are unsurprisingly Debussyian, offering tentative intimations of Crumb's most potently magical music, dating from the late sixties and early seventies. [Listen - track 13, 01:58 - 02:45.]

To listen to the aural illustrations in this review, you may need to download RealNetworks' realplayer G2.