Ancient Voices of Children

Last evening we heard a performance of Black Angels by avant-garde composer George Crumb (b. 1929). That work tries, in about eighteen extremely intense minutes, to capture, interpret, and respond to the cataclysmic changes that were affecting America during the Vietnam War. Immediately after completing Black Angels, Crumb received a commission from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation, which resulted in Ancient Voices of Children (1970). For this work he set texts by the Spanish poet, playwright, and liberal activist Federico García Lorca, assassinated in 1936 by Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War.
Ancient Voices continues Crumb’s interest in unique aural effects, and its scoring calls for both traditional (soprano, oboe, and harp) and nontraditional instruments (e.g., toy piano, amplified piano, mandolin, and musical saw). Particularly important are the extended vocal techniques that Crumb requests. He was intrigued by the resonances created by having the soprano sing directly into an amplified piano. The work sets five poems with two intervening dance movements. Realizing that audiences hungered for information about his compositional intent and motivations, Crumb revealed that the “creative germ” of Ancient Voices relates to “the climactic final words of the last song: ‘... and I will go very far ... to ask Christ the lord to give me back my ancient soul of a child’.” How many people in Crumb’s generation had seen too much destruction and evil? How many people, too, sought a way to unlearn what they had learned, to unsee the horrors they had seen. Crumb’s response was this music. It is not the placid approach of New Age music, but its earnestness is equally spiritual in origin.

(c) Jason Stell