By Robert Wood
On Thursday, September 11, soprano Dawn Upshaw and pianist Gilbert Kalish come to BAM to perform George Crumb's milestone composition Ancient Voices of Children as part of Nonesuch Records at BAM. Here's a brief introduction to the work in ten parts.
1. Hauntingly evocative and brimming with unconventional textures, George Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children (1970) transforms the mystical poetry of Federico García Lorca into an incantatory musical seance. It is scored for soprano, boy soprano, oboe, harp, amplified piano, toy piano, mandolin, and various percussion, including prayer stones and Japanese temple bells.
2. Crumb was attracted to what García Lorca referred to as duende—"all that has dark sounds." "This 'mysterious power that everyone feels but that no philosopher has explained' is in fact the spirit of the earth," García Lorca writes. "All one knows is that it burns the blood like powdered glass, that it exhausts, that it rejects all the sweet geometry one has learned."
