Vox Balaenae (Voice
of the Whale), composed in 1971
for the New York Camerata, is scored
for flute, cello and piano, all to be
amplified in concert performance. The
work was inspired by the singing of
the humpback whale, a tape recording
of which the composer had heard two
or three years before writing the work.
The piece opens with a prologue in which
the instruments are shown in a wide
variety of colours. The flautist has
much singing into the flute, there are
roaring strings from the piano, and
the cellist’s opening ‘flautando’ whistles
over them all. In many ways this is
seminal Crumb, with the techniques employed
embodying his philosophy and desire
to live entirely within the music, to
extract everything humanly possible
from the available materials. His sound-world
is searchingly experimental, but always
idiomatic and respectful of the player
and the instruments. The cello’s flute
tones sing like seabirds, the flautists
vocalisations give a breadth of expression
beyond pure notes, and the piano’s strings
can become a slide guitar, a thrumming
sitar, a bass drum, an echo box, or
suggest images such as the sparkling
of light through water.
There are of course
quite a few conventionally played notes
in this piece, and the melodic lines
have an exotic, sometimes oriental feel.
Open intervals and expressive lines
draw the listener into an often beguiling
aural environment, and the return of
recognisable musical motives provide
handles on which to hang the work’s
variation form, framed by a prologue
and an epilogue. Beautifully performed,
if I have any criticism at all then
it is in the engineer’s approach to
the ‘amplified in concert performance’
instruction. The impression is there
with the cello, which is a little more
distant in the soundstage but beefed
up somewhere along the line, and the
alto flute sound becomes a little opaque
through the effect given. The piano
seems however to be unaffected. While
these are relatively innocuous effects
I think it might have been better to
leave the ‘amplification’ factor out
of the equation altogether.
Federico’s Little
Songs for Children, written for
the Jubal Trio, was completed during
the summer of 1986. The seven little
poems constituting the Canciones
para Niños by Federico Garciá
Lorca reflect many different aspects
of a child’s fantasy world. The mood
can be reflective, playful, mock-serious,
gently ironic, or simply joyous. An
innocently playful piccolo colours the
opening Señorita of the Fan,
and each song creates its own atmosphere
around the various poems – lyrical flute
and harp for Afternoon, the birdsong
of the alto flute in A Song Sung,
a whispering and wistful voice, sliding
harp notes played as the pedals are
changed and the more breathy tones of
the bass flute characterise the Snail.
With each song being short in duration,
this cycle is a magical world of imagination
and contrast. The relatively gentle
flute and harp are unthreatening but
capable of their own extremes. With
the final Silly Song returning
to the piccolo, the sense of a completed
journey is satisfying both musically
and dramatically.
An Idyll for the
Misbegotten for amplified flute
and percussion was composed in 1985.
The composer states: "I feel that
‘misbegotten’ well describes the fateful
and melancholy predicament of the species
homo sapiens at the present moment in
time", suggesting that the music
be "heard from afar, over a lake,
on a moonlit evening in August".
Such specific instructions might seem
impractical, but in fact they are a
useful guide for musicians when seeking
to recreate the atmosphere desired by
the composer – as effective as the hand
gestures of Messiaen describing the
flight of a bird, even when none of
us students understood a word of his
eloquent French. The scoring, employing
two of man’s oldest instruments, conjures
up an often rough hewn primeval atmosphere.
Flautist Robert Aitken is the work’s
dedicatee, and of course has the technical
aspects of the piece well under control
– whistle tones and harmonics among
them. The use of a quotation from Debussy’s
Syrinx is of course instantly
recognisable.
Eleven Echoes of
Autumn was composed during the spring
of 1966 for the Aeolian Chamber Players.
The work consists of eleven pieces or
echi, which are performed without
interruption. Each of the echi
exploits certain timbral aspects of
each instrument, in the composer’s words:
"for example, eco 1 for
piano alone is based entirely on the
5th partial harmonic, eco 2 on
violin harmonics in combination with
7th partial harmonics produced on the
piano by drawing a piece of hard rubber
along the strings. A delicate aura of
sympathetic vibrations emerges in echi
3 and 4, produced in the latter case
by alto flute and clarinet playing into
the piano, causing the strings to vibrate
sympathetically. At the conclusion of
the work the violinist achieves a mournful,
fragile timbre by playing with the bow
hair completely slack." Such technical
descriptions may or may not help, but
do give an impression of some of the
inner workings of the music. The overall
effect is of organic growth though an
extended ‘broken arch’, sometimes through
atmospheric, Webernesque spareness:
sometimes with the filigree passagework
which is a fingerprint of Crumb’s expressive
palette.
As far as programmatic
content is concerned, the composer guides
the listener towards the significance
of a motto-quote from Federico García
Lorca: "... y los arcos rotos donde
sufre el tiempo", which translates
as; "... and the broken arches
where time suffers", whose words
are softly intoned as a preface to each
of three cadenzas. Again superbly performed,
the piano possibly has a little too
much of the advantage as far as recorded
balance goes, pushing the other instruments
aside in the ff of the climax.
The engineers will have zoomed in on
the strings in order to pick up all
those subtle, quiet effects, and this
is the penalty. Slight caveats aside,
the recording is very good for all of
the works on this disc, set in a pleasantly
resonant acoustic and with plenty of
detail - without placing the instruments
right up your nose.
As ever, this kind
of music won’t be everyone’s cup of
tea; and those keen on ocean noises
should be made aware that Vox Balaenae
is more Crumb than Whale. If you are
already aware of George Crumb’s fascinating
sound world then you will know what
to expect, and while there are one or
two other versions of these pieces in
the catalogue you won’t be disappointed
by the New Music Concerts Ensemble.
At bargain price there’s no better place
to start a new exploration. George Crumb’s
star in the recording catalogue continues
to wax, and with Naxos’ American Series
producing fine recordings of his work
there can be little doubt that this
trend will continue, with every justification.
Dominy Clements
Naxos American Classics page
New Music Concerts Ensemble/Robert
Aitken 
