George Crumb's Channels of Mythification Author(s): Victoria Adamenko Source: American Music, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Autumn, 2005), pp. 324-354 Published by: University of Illinois Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4153057 Accessed: 05-08-2016 05:49 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms
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VICTORIA ADAMENKO
George Crumb's Channels of Mythification
Music tends to be mythological, at least some of it. Some of my music is mythological just in expression. People tell me that it has that sense sometimes--ancient. George Crumb, from a December 9, 1997, interview at Rutgers University
George Crumb's fascination with mythology has not previously been specifically addressed, although since the 1970s, when he wrote the largescale works that brought him fame--Ancient Voices of Children, Black Angels (both 1970), Vox Balaenae (1971), and Makrokosmos I-III (1972-74)--the
lexis of the critical essays on Crumb has included references to magic,1 mythic characters, and mythic time. Evidently, this perception stemmed from two major components of Crumb's style. First, the provocative titles, program notes, character designations, and other verbal comments by the composer convey his interest in the mythological. Second, of course, is the
sound matter itself-a bricolage of unusual timbres, spell-like recitations, counting in multiple languages, and other sound effects that invoke the "supernatural." These very elements stirred some criticism among a few commentators who refused to take Crumb's "spooky effects" seriously. A native of Moscow, Russia, Victoria Adamenko received her Ph.D. in musicology from Rutgers University in 2000; her dissertation was titled "Neo-Mythologism in Twentieth-Century Music." She has taught at the University of West Florida;
previously she has been published in Journal of Musicological Research, Music
Research Forum, The Organ Encyclopedia, the European Journal for Semiotic Studies,
and Semiotica 2001, and she has given papers in Helsinki, Seattle, Montreal, and
elsewhere.
American Music Fall 2005
@ 2005 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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George Crumb's Channels of Mythification 325 The composer then was rebuked for "lack of musical substance" and a "tightly circumscribed use of primary material" behind the superficial and programmatic effects, and derided for a lack of "intellectual inter-
est" or "appeal to the senses."2 These disapprovals echoed the ideals of modernism, when a direct appealing to the senses by experimenting with timbres and orchestral colors was condemned as shallow unless it submitted to rational structural procedures with timbres-such as Klangfarbenmelodie. To the disappointment of those who expected to find a rationale behind Crumb's novel "effects," he repeatedly insisted that these novelties were merely products of "a composer's whimsy,"3 "purely fanciful."4 Unsurprisingly, the syncretism of Crumb's conception was overlooked from the rationalist premises that value abstract coherence.
It did not take long for traditional pitch-class set analysts to come to Crumb's defense and to demonstrate his ability to integrate and rigorously treat his materials.5 The results of these analyses are helpful, but they may be even more beneficial for a fuller comprehension of Crumb's
world if combined with a broader cultural approach. I suggest that several "channels of mythification" are detectable in Crumb's work-numerology, syncretism, symbolization, archaism, ritualism, and universalizing of the structural components of language and formal design. These "channels" are interrelated; they frequently overlap, and they certainly resist being defined by a single "-ism" term. Mythification penetrates different aspects of Crumb's creativity: philosophy, aesthetics, the choice
of poetic text, musical language, form, and notation. For instance, the tendency for symbolization in Crumb's aesthetics is connected to his "symbolic notation," which, in its turn, relates to the cyclic and symmetrical designs of form, dynamics, and pitch organization. Crumb's emphasis on the "universals of music" calls for an application of Claude Levi-Strauss's analysis of myth, while the composer's reliance on the symbolic and the "pre-reflective" archetypes may be viewed as a manifestation of twentieth-century "neo-mythologism." The latter is presented in the studies of the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics, lin-
guistics, and criticism-in particular, of Eleazar Meletinsky (b. 1918), Zara Minz (1927-87), Yuri Lotman (1922-93), Boris A. Uspenski (b. 1927), and Vladimir Toporov.6 I will first survey features of the mythic thought
that are outlined in these methodological paradigms that are relevant to Crumb's work (whose mutually complementary nature allows us to disregard their systemic borderlines), and then examine individual "channels" of Crumb's mythification. The analytical focus will be on Ancient Voices of Children and Black Angels as exemplary works that represent the tendency but not exhaust it.
Levi-Strauss argued that repetitiveness and symmetry are "elementary molds" of structuring, universally pertinent to the human mindset, which
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reveal themselves in myth-making.7 Mythic time is not only circular, cyclic, and recurrent; it has also been described as timeless-that is, a "time before time," when the "first event" took place, and the model for
consequent events was established. In connection to the reactualization of the precedent, relation of reason and consequence are replaced by repetition and reiteration. Such ideas as repetition, symmetry, and opposition may be considered, to a certain degree, apart from stylistic differences and historical evolution. Levi-Strauss noted that such universal
patterns of structuring are not "pre-ordained and inflexible structures, but rather molds from which are produced forms that turn up as entities
without being obliged to remain identical."8 He used these "molds" as a basis for comparative analyses of music and myth. Toporov attributed four possible forms of symmetrical transformations: "movement," "antimovement," "mirror movement," and "mirror antimovement" to the Paleolithic period of myth making.9 Others point to repetitions or symmetrical structures within mythic texts typically containing slight combinatorial changes, as evidence of myth's propensity for collecting
variants of the same idea.10
The structures of symmetrical concentric circles and inversions are typical of the mythic cosmos. This is illustrated most clearly by the mythologem of the circle in its various manifestations (mandala, anima mun-
di).11 A mythologem, according to the Tartu-Moscow school, is a symbol with a virtually unlimited spectrum of meanings, a "sign of all," to use Minz's expression.12 The mythologem of the circle, for example, is rich
with associations and particularly evocative of "all"-hence its use in ritual plates, discs, and bowls, and its many meanings, from the idea of eternal return to the embracing structure of the universe.13 Another widely spread mythologem is that of the world tree-the all-embracing and symmetrical structure that symbolically represents the whole cosmos.
The scholars of the Tartu-Moscow school observed that, although a restoration of mythic thought in its totality is impossible from the posi-
tion of modern culture, nevertheless, many fragments of that thought were resurrected in twentieth-century artistic creations. One example is number symbolism. The time-honored mythification and sacralization of certain numbers and operations with them has been due to their role
in creation myths. In many cosmologies, each number had a unique meaning attached to it. Numbers in archaic myths "were connected to each other not mathematically, but rather symbolically, associatively, aesthetically, and mnemonically."14 In the twentieth century, Toporov wrote,
a tendency to return semantic significance back to numbers is being
realized in the arts and poetry-the realm that serves as a sanctu-
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George Crumb's Channels of Mythification 327 ary for the achievements of archaic epochs. .... Archaic numerical notions continue their life in the modern creative mind; moreover, those notions undergo development and transformation, as they serve again and again as nascent material for the new myth-poetical images and concepts.15 Meletinsky argued that the emergence of twentieth-century "neo-mythologism" was largely due to the works of Carl Jung (1875-1961), which,
via mythic symbols, established a bridge between the archaic and the modern, the collective and the individual. Jung argued that various numerological structures and symbols often used in myths "not only express order, they create it,"16 following the ultimate goal of creation myths. Meletinsky emphasized that a "conscious appropriation of an unconscious discovery" is characteristic of new-mythologism; as he concluded:
Jungian psychoanalysis, with its universalizing and metaphorical interpretation of the unconscious play of the imagination, presented a certain trampoline for a huge leap from the psychology of an alien-
ated or oppressed modem individual to the pre-reflexive psychology of archaic society.17
The turn to prereflective psychology is aimed at achieving wholeness (i.e., the "healing" of the fragmented personality, in Jungian terms). In mythic consciousness, the idea of syncretism is inseparable from medicinal function.18 The past is viewed in myths as the time of primordial unity,
when many currently disparate elements were fused together, including languages and the arts. Thus wholeness can be attained through ritual and its symbolic forms.
Neo-mythologism via Jung Crumb has mentioned owning Jung's books.19 Both the direct and the me-
diated influence of Jung's ideas on Crumb are possible, since the mandala and other Jungian archetypes are also discernable in Lorca's poetry--one of the acknowledged sources for Crumb's own poetics.20 Crumb, from his position as a late modernist composer, expressed a longing for the archetypal. Consider his well-known comment about Lorca's poetry:
I feel that the essential meaning of this poetry is concerned with the most primary things: life, death, love, the smell of the earth, the
sounds of the wind and the sea. These ur-concepts are embodied in a language which is primitive and stark, but which is capable of infinitely subtle nuance.21
The composer's fascination with "the ur-concepts" (the archetypal topics of poetry), and the archaic or "primitive" language in which they are
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expressed, may be rooted in the rediscovery of the "archaic remnants" (a term Jung borrowed from Freud). These, according to Jung, reveal themselves in modern thought through dreams or artistic creations. Analyzing both, Jung discerned images-chiefly visual sacred symbols, such as the cross and magic circle (mandala)-that were typologically similar to those found in archaic myths, collective in their nature and origin, "emanating from primeval dreams and creative fantasies."22 Jung
specifically studied his patients' night dreams and compared them to myths. Night dream is also a realm of imagery typical of Crumb, expressed in such pieces as Night Music (1963, rev. 1976), Dream Sequence (1976), and others. From the perspective of Jungian thought, it is not surprising that Mandala was a projected title for one of Crumb's unrealized compositions, as he admitted. When asked if any of his circles were associated with mandala, the symbol typical for Eastern religions, he said, "I was thinking of things associated with mandala while working on a piece that was never completed. I sketched this piece and used the word Mandala as the title."23Although Crumb never realized his Mandala project, some of his other "circle-music" scores, upon closer examination,
show their connection to mandala as an archetypal idea. The Sanskrit word mandala means circle, and Crumb's work displays an abundance of circular forms both explicit (through notation) and implicit (through palindromic structures). Neo-mythological "conscious appropriation of unconscious discoveries," in Crumb's case, may very well have been based on his continuous reading from mythology. As Crumb indicated, his interest in mythology
draws more from an idiosyncratic worldview than actual mythic narratives or characters: "My music is not programmatic in the nineteenthcentury sense of this word. [The use of myths] is not literal, [but is] a part of my thinking."24 In the 1997 interview, Crumb portrayed himself
as someone familiar with different mythological traditions, from Greek to Norse, finding inspiration in standard texts on the subject:
I have Edith Hamilton's book on Greek mythology. I have read that book: she is very good on the myths! These are retellings of the myths in a very concise way. She also has a short book on Norse mythology. She has also written The Way of the Greeks, which is one of
the greatest books ever written. ... There is another writer, Bulfinch,
who has a book called World Mythology, which I read, and looked through some other books by him.25
Crumb's approach to myth also involves what Meletinsky ascribed to neo-mythologism as "the universalizing and metaphorical ... play of the imagination," demonstrably so in Ancient Voices of Children. Here, Crumb testified to referring to an imaginary Indian Ghost Dance, which he described as "an ancient mythological dance-I used it just as a title
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George Crumb's Channels of Mythification 329 [in movement IV], referring to a mysterious character, after reading about it in one of the books on Indian mythology."26 In the context of a Garcia Lorca work such as Ancient Voices the reference to the Indian Ghost Dance
is a universalizing gesture. Crumb's predilection for symmetry, which he himself acknowledged,27 in combination with his idiosyncratic fondness for the "child theme" and
the idea of circular notation, may all be interpreted in Jungian terms as an attempt to achieve personal wholeness through mandala symbolism. Jungian theory links the depths of the psyche (unconsciousness in a dream), individual wholeness (holy, or healed state of the psyche), the archetype of the child ("who knows as yet of no conflict," the symbol of wholeness), and roundness (one of the forms expressing the idea of wholeness; a "sacred precinct where all the split-parts of the personality are united").28 Crumb's employment of circular notation and circular structuring in association with the child theme matches Jung's description of the child archetype as "a symbol... capable of numerous transfor-
mations ... : it can be expressed by roundness, the circle or sphere. .... It is not surprising that so many mythological saviors are child gods."29 The significance of the figure of the child in Crumb's works (Star-Child and Ancient Voices of Children, for example) matches Jungian denotation
of the child archetype as "unifying the opposites; a mediator, bringer of healing, that is, one who makes whole." At the same time, the idea of wholeness, according to Jung, can be best expressed by a circle.30 The circle would then represent "the total being." To achieve this, one must be healed: "The descent into the depths ... of utter unconsciousness in our dream ... will bring healing." These notions-deep levels of psyche, dream, child, circle, and the idea of wholeness-are also parts of Crumb's own rhetoric regarding his artistic philosophy. Crumb noted that "a strong initial conception for a piece of music must come from deep within the psyche. A composer draws on this source according to an urgent need to express. If a composer remains true to himself, I feel that
stylistic consistency would follow naturally [emphasis mine]."31 That Crumb acknowledges deep psychic levels of a composer's creativity and relates it to individual wholeness, or the inner integrity of a composer, is
comparable to the role outlined by Jung of the mandala as an "archetype of wholeness," and its ability to "put together apparently irreconcilable opposites and bridge over apparently hopeless splits."32 The Jungian model, according to which the archetypal images are autonomously available to each individual psyche, is apparent in Crumb's declared independence from any historical sources and from the influence of immediate predecessors who had used these archetypal images. From his testimony, it would seem that he conceived of his graphic notation by turning directly to the archetypal "ur-forms" rather than to any historical models: "I was told later about the circular scores of the Renais-
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330
Adamenko
sance and the Baroque; at the time I used this kind of notation I did not know any historical [circular] scores."33 This is, indeed, surprising, given
that Ross Lee Finney (1906-97), Crumb's professor of composition at the University of Michigan from 1953 to 1955, employed circular notation in his Spherical Madrigals (1947) for a cappella choir (see Example 1). Although the seven texts used in Spherical Madrigals deal with the sym-
bolism of a circle, only the first madrigal, printed on the cover page, is presented as a circle. Nevertheless, the mythologem of a circle is exploited
throughout Spherical Madrigals by other, nongraphic, means: the use of rounded, inverted, and mirror forms, canons, and poetry that expresses the symbolism of a circle. The circularly notated madrigal looks more like
a fancy cover decoration of the score than an independent piece. It is in canon form, as are many circularly scored compositions of the Renaissance and the Baroque that appear to be the prototypes for this work. For example, the canon Sive lidum (ca. 1490) by Ramos de Pareja34 has a structure similar to that of Finney's madrigal, with the four voice entrances marked by the wind-rose. Not surprisingly, Crumb's own pieces such as Crucifixus and Agnus Dei, from Makrokosmos I-II, resonate with earlier prototypes-for instance, a "graphically" notated canon Clama ne cesses (1611) by Stich von Wolfg.35 One might infer that Crumb learned the idea of modeling on early circular notation from Finney. However, Crumb denies the influence of his professor in this matter, claiming that Example 1. Ross Lee Finney, Spherical Madrigals (1947), cover page. @ 1965 Henmar Press Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Vie
44 1 o #
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George Crumb's Channels of Mythification 331 he had neither seen Spherical Madrigals nor ever discussed the issues of "graphic notation" with his teacher at the time he started to write his circular scores.36 Moreover, by 1963, when Crumb composed his first circular score (Night Music), circular scores had been written by Karlheinz Stockhausen (Refrain, 1959), Roland Kayn (Galaxis, 1962), and, in the same
year, Ladislav Kupkovic (" ... "for bass clarinet or cello solo). Despite that,
Crumb insists that he reinvented the idea of circular notation in his own
way: "I knew Stockhausen's Refrain before I did any of my own circular works, but his work was not a direct influence on me. I use a different
principle when drawing my scores."37 The symbolism of the archetypal figures that Crumb chose-circle, arch, cross, and spiral-relates to his definition of myths as "generalizations or symbolic representations of the things that are happening or have happened in history [emphasis mine]."38 Not a practicing believer, Crumb explained the role of mythic and religious attributes in his works
as cultural symbols.39 Notably, every fourth movement (the 4th, 8th, and 12th) in Crumb's Makrokosmos I and II are also subtitled "Symbol." These Crumb "symbols," or the works of symbolic notation, certainly contribute to the "mythological expression" of his work. As is expected of symbols, they puzzle the viewer, who is thus offered hints to a wide array of meanings traditionally associated with these archetypal images.40
Performing from such a score means transforming it from "a thing in itself" into "a thing for us," and thus inevitably presents a technical problem. This is probably most easily resolved by memorizing the piece in question. However, rotating the score during a performance would be a special action to recall the mysterious movements of a shaman during a ritual, using tools and gestures that are most extraordinary in the eyes of the noninitiated. Some performers may prefer to cut the score and paste it in an easily readable version. This act would only prove that the world of mythic imagination, with its cyclic time and symbolic space, is not exactly compatible with our world of linear reading, measured in conventional categories of time and space.
The Mythologem of the Circle in Ancient Voices of Children The figure of the circle in the central movement of The Ancient Voices of Children (Example 2), subtitled Dance of the Sacred Life-Cycle, remains
multivalent in its meaning and open for interpretation, as the following exchange illustrates. I asked the composer, "Is the circular notation [of the Ancient Voices of Children] connected in your mind with the ideas of
reincarnation, changes of seasons, and other symbolic meanings that different mythological traditions attach to the figure of a circle?"
He answered, "It is connected to all of those things."41 This universal gesture by the composer corresponds to the indefinite
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Example 2. George Crumb, Ancient Voices of Children, a fragment from movement
3. @ 1971 C. F. Peters Corporation. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
SOW, eaw?r
kriur 'd
matd
f
I
. .. . . .. : / ~ ZA2 -i;J II.EM , I , -L- fL d lr i l , ,'
A3 L44 Wo o-W t 496 ikC1 ~ f 60L toC pwdw
' ..".. ::.', ". DANCE OF THE "...... " ..........
1-;%.W ;I "';"*Ibi~r " SACRED kOM) LIFE-CYCLE"a..,[:/:...t.; ,,-
--
Y_.
icil~lm
M4
- -:ul?~ucu-c fkr? .- .1 , ,!
AW
4044
catem
4
40& "IfPW4*ftfP"! w
j cii)~i
~?i,.-
array of meaning offered by the mythologem of a circle. It may very well include the psychoanalytical notion of "symbiotic orbit" between a mother and a child attributed to Ancient Voices of Children by Ellen Spitz.42 According to Jung, the rituals involving the mandala treated it as "an instrument of contemplation ... to aid concentration by narrowing down the psychic field of vision and restricting it to the center."43 In
concordance with this description, Crumb emphasizes the special role of the circularly notated section (Dance of the Sacred Life-Cycle) by making
it the centerpiece of the work's five-movement design. The poetry of Garcia Lorca-rich with links to archaic myths-clearly served as one of the poetic sources, perhaps the most important, of
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George Crumb's Channels of Mythification 333 Crumb's own ways of mythification.44 Often Lorca's poetry serves as a generative force; in particular, Crumb considered the words chosen for the final song of Ancient Voices of Children to be "the creative germ" of
the whole compositional project.45 Crumb himself arranged the verbal text of this work using selected verses from different Lorca poems. A brief analysis of the resulting text reveals the multilayered symbolic, allegoric, and, overall, mythological modus operandi. In the context of the whole text, the first line, "The little boy was look-
ing for his voice," implies the one-to-one relationship of voice to soul. This voice/soul is silent: I do not want it for speaking with: I will make a ring of it
so that he may wear my silence on his little finger Here, the mythologem of a ring, also itself a circle, embraces the motives
of eternal recurrence and "echo," the idea that after someone's death his
or her voice continues to live.46 Consider, for example, the Greek myth of Echo, or Polidor, whose voice told the story of his murder after he died.47
Like the boy "Echo" in Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, Lorca's child has "come from so far away," "from the ridge of hard frost." The motive of the
child's death is present in both Mann's and Lorca's narratives.48 Crumb selected the text for the middle movement, "From where do you come, my love, my child?" from the song of Yerma in Lorca's tragedy Yerma (1934), also loaded with various archaic mythic motives.49 The last line, "I will go very far ... to ask Christ the Lord to give me back my ancient soul of a child," corresponds to the motive of the eternal recurrence of souls. It also invokes the concept of an immortal and unified world soul (anima mundi), the image of which is also represented as a circle, as seen in Robert Fludd's Utriusque cosmi (Oppenheim, 1617-21). That the soul of the dead may be preserved in the voice of a musical instrument is another
archetypal motive of many world mythologies.50 In Lorca's poem, "the King of the crickets had it" (the child's voice), the soul was retained in the voice of the cricket. Prolonging the underlying symbolism, in some myths
the cricket or a cicada personified the deity of the dying afternoon (for example, the Greek myth of the immortal ever-old Tithonus). The next line of the text (also circular), "Each afternoon in Granada, a child dies each afternoon" (emphasis mine) is linked to the symbolism of both the cricket and the ring from the first verse. A cricket that makes music at sunset is associated with afternoon (allegorically, the afternoon of life, or old age).
Conversely, traditional allegory always presents the newborn child as "the new day" or "morning of life." "A child dies each afternoon" might also be understood allegorically: the morning of life dies, the afternoon of
life begins. The circle is now closed. While at the beginning of Crumb's
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334
Adamenko
text arrangement the young boy tries to find his voice in the realm of the
"old" cricket, at the end there is a request "to give me back my ancient soul of a child"-an inversion of the initial "young/old" opposition. The symbolism of the whole text proves so pregnant with meaning, including references to known mythic motives, that it supercedes itself as a literary
device and grows into a mythologem. A comparison of Lorca's poems with Crumb's excerpted selections reveals the composer's concern with circularity. For example, in the fourth
movement, Crumb chose only these two lines that contain an inversion (found in the translation of the entire sixteen-line poem Gacela V (Del niiio muetro), from De Divan del Tamarit of 1934):
Each afternoon in Granada, a child dies each afternoon.
Crumb chose these lines as a subtitle for the movement. While inversion
structure presents circularity in its closed and singular form, refrainbased structures express the idea of circularity in a different fashion-as an open and a repetitive cycle. According to the composer's instructions for the score, "both Spanish and English texts should be printed as part of the program notes." The corresponding lines of the Spanish original contain a refrain-like repetition:
Todas las tardes en Granada, Todas las tardes se muere un ni-no. The idea of repetition is also the governing principle of the musical form in the central movement of Ancient Voices: the "circle music" is to be
repeated three times, accompanied by an ostinato figure on the percussion. Clearly, Crumb identifies the idea of circularity with the idea of repetition. Notably, Lorca's poems-the source of Crumb's inspiration for many of his works-are, in general, rich with repetitions, refrains, and symmetrical "concentric" inversions. One example is found in Gazela X (De la huida). Crumb borrowed the first five lines for the second movement of Ancient Voices of Children. In Lorca's poem, lines 4 and 5 reappear in inversion as 14 and 15:
(4) Muchas veces me he perdido por el mar, (5) Como me pierdo en el coraz6n de algunos nin6s. (14) Como me pierdo en el coraz6n de algunos nin6s, (15) me he perdido muchas veces por el mar Crumb realizes the combinatorial idea (compare Lorca's lines 4 and 15) on the level of musical form and large-scale structure. The beginning of the first movement contains several elements that return at the end of the last movement. They reappear either unchanged (the sextuplet
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George Crumb's Channels of Mythification 335 phrase marked fffz-see Examples 3a and 3b), in retrograde (the last motive-Examples 3c and 3d), or transposed (the repetition of a single pitch C sharp in the first phrase of the work that becomes C natural at the end).
Example 3. Fragments from George Crumb, Ancient Voices of Children. ? 1971 C.
F. Peters Corporation. All rights reserved. Used by permission. a. From movement 1
b. From the last movement
c. E ndingpofmthe-ast-movemen
Soy ;st.
Bg ~ ~ ~ ~ .___ ------,t-1 ~ j~CIt?. (Lmor 1i. ) i
O4. c. Ending of the last movement
(Mart d;stknt) A-1~-
X&-- 0-~
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336
Adamenko
d. Soprano phrase from movement 1
The last movement contains the recurring phrase of the oboe; this constitutes a recapitulation of somewhat similar material in the first movement, in the section Dances of the Ancient Earth. Thus Crumb forms concentric circles on the macro level of structure. Example 4 shows a cer-
tain quality of roundness (which may also be defined as quasi-symmetry) present on the level of pitch organization within the third movement. Crumb establishes local tonal centers by either frequent repetition or longer duration, or accentuation of certain pitches. Their arrangement is based on the principle of recurrence of some pitch classes, of which the Example 4. Recurring pitch classes that serve as local tonal centers in movement 3 of Ancient Voices of Children. ? 1971 C. E Peters Corporation. All rights reserved.
Used by permission
m.1
m.2
m.3
m.4 .
m.5
B 123
C123
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George Crumb's Channels of Mythification 337 most prominent is D sharp, but with C and G sharp also recurring." Another instance of circular/symmetric structuring occurs at the beginning
of the last movement. Crumb notated the initial segment as a separate
episode (Example 5a), which contains six chords; of these six, chords one and six are identical in pitch content (Example 5b), as are chords two and five (Example 5c). Chords three and four (Example 5d) each contain two tritones a half-step apart from each other, another instance of symmetry. Though symmetry and circularity of structure are present in the other
movements, the central movement-the one that employs circular notation-is most distinctive in this respect. Here, not only the pitch materials,
but more important, the elements of sound and dynamics-Crumbian primary means of expression52-are also structured circularly/symmetrically. The ostinato pattern of the percussion comes with a characteristic Example 5. George Crumb, Ancient Voices of Children. @ 1971 C. E Peters Corpora-
tion. All rights reserved. Used by permission. a. Six symmetrically organized chords at the beginning of the final movement
iS (brbS5 b,aL,-s) (at ;, Gisp.
f~
~
Crb ! --- 3 --, v.
CYM LIXIS 14 fGL m ..- - (I=?c. ,,;b-.) -3-.I 8 .....~ borbcrS
(.50o)
z
_
Hdd " .-L4_A. " "..___.. - &,_ .R"" _____-7 or-7
"
-- -- ---- - --
E
I,,
'Piano
ctre
c....
L -reprise M.7 M.7 m.3
M.7
m.3 " M.7
m.4 M.7
m.5 n
m.6, . E12
El. piano
'em.9
octave (descending, D sharp-D), and a diminished octave (descending, B flat-B). As instruments enter, the whole-tone idea is retained in the form of a drone (electric piano), and the chromatic idea is continued in the harp part, which contains two pairs of pitch classes that are a halfstep apart (F sharp, G, D, and E flat). The instrumental parts complement each other chromatically, as they contain three pairs of pitch classes that are a half-step apart from each other (A flat and G; F sharp and G; A flat
and A).
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342
Adamenko
Numerology in Black Angels In his electric string quartet, Crumb establishes Jungian "mythic order," based first on intuitive and then on more conscious incarnations of the archetypal numbers 7 and 13, which corresponds to the neo-mythological
"conscious appropriation of an unconscious discovery": "When I was writing Black Angels, it occurred to me that these numbers appeared all the time in my sketches, and that was when I decided to make use of
them."54
Dolly Kessner claimed that number 7 (represented by seven halfsteps, or a perfect fifth) here symbolically represents "God-Life," while 13 (half-steps, or a minor ninth) stands for "Devil-Death."55 On the other
hand, Crumb himself thus decoded his association between the number 7 and the tritone: "In Black Angels I used a tritone, which corresponds to
number 7."56 During the interview at Rutgers University, the composer drew a sketch illustrating what he later called the "basic sound," or the "tritonal axis of the piece""57 (Example 9). The contradiction between a double association of 7 as both a tritone (with its historically notorious "bad" intervallic ethos) and a perfect fifth (with its culturally rooted connotation of "good" intervallic ethos) is only apparent, for the number
7 is applicable to interval calculation in two ways-expressing either a number of half steps, or the pitch names involved. From Example 9 it is clear that Crumb has used the latter to assign the number 7 to F sharp on the sketch, while a subtraction 13 - 7 still gives 6 as the expression of
the tritone's intervallic size. This multivalence of associations is likely to be an intended effect on Crumb's part in the general equilibrium-like atmosphere of this work. In the foreword to the score Crumb indicates that "an important pitch element in the work-ascending D-sharp, A and E--... symbolizes the fateful numbers 7-13." Based on the number of half-steps, the tritone D-sharp-A corresponds to 6, and the fifth A-E-to 7, while the sum of these two numbers results in 13, which is also a standard numerical expression for a minor ninth (in this case, D sharp to E) as a minor second (1) plus an octave (12). The essential difference between mathematical operations in the mod-
Example 9. Facsimile of Crumb's sketch illustrating the "tritonal axis" associated with the numbers 7 and 13, in Black Angels.
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George Crumb's Channels of Mythification 343 ern sense and the operations with numbers in myths lies in the fact that
in myths each number, or a combination of numbers, carries a unique and tangible "ethos," meaning, or a mode; as a result of this, formulas such as "13 times 7" and "7 times 13" would never be equal, while in the abstract science of mathematics these only appear opposite, but in fact are equal in the resulting value. Crumb's program in the preface to Black Angels contains a diagram clearly demonstrating this type of operation: "13 times 7 and 7 times 13" of the first movement is the direct opposition
of "7 times 13 and 13 times 7" of the last. How is this opposition realized
in the inner structure of both movements?
The first movement contains bracketed groups of notes with numbers under them that indicate the number of repeats of that group (Example 10). The entire movement is made of quintuplets, each of which equals one second, as indicated in the author's remark in the score, or an eighth
note (MM = 60). Thus each labeled number indicates duration in seconds,
as well as the number of repeats. The total number of eighth notes in the movement equals 91--precisely the mathematical sum arrived at by multiplying the two fatal numbers, 7 and 13. Since an eighth-note beat unit equals one second, the total sounding time ideally should also be 91 seconds. However, performances vary in this respect; here lies the natural borderline between the numerologically ideal model and the actual reality of a performance. Number 7 predominates among all bracketed indications of the first movement-namely, this number is met here 6 times. (This seems to be not accidental, for both 6 and 7 are significant in the pitch formula of the piece.) Let us compare this to the last movement (Example 11). Including the "bridge" from the previous movement-a sustained high d in the cello part, marked 13 seconds-and excluding the Coda that begins on page 9 of the score (Sarabanda de la muerte oscura), this movement (13. Threnody III: Night of the Electric Insects) contains an approximately similar number of units, or seconds, if we apply the same rule of counting bracketed groups as in the first movement. New here, however, are eight groups, each labeled 13 seconds. Their overlap makes calculation of the total time less precise. Nevertheless, there are clearly three groups
of 13 seconds each in the first segment (marked "disembodied, incorporeal"). Two of these overlap only slightly, with the overall duration of the segment resulting in a little less than 39. The similar brackets of the second segment (marked "vibrant, intense!") carry the sacramental numbers 7-3-4-7 (totaling in 21 seconds), which overlap by one group (= 1 second) with the final segment. The latter consists of three slightly overlapping 13-second groups. Thus, adding
