Black Angels: 13 Images from the Dark Land

George Crumb began composing his most celebrated work in 1969. Though nominally for a string quartet, an ensemble usually associated with a relatively staid style of music, Crumb found his work being influenced by the horrors of the Vietnam War, which had escalated through the 1960s and were being brought home to Americans through photojournalism and TV coverage. Scored, in the composer’s words, for “electric string quartet” (the stringed instruments are amplified), Black Angels: 13 Images from the Dark Land creates a dark and even nerve-shredding soundworld. Its performers are required at various times to play gongs and maracas, or to play their instruments in unorthodox ways, such as trilling with fingers capped with metal thimbles, or by bowing the wrong end of their strings. This latter technique creates a muted, viol-like sound, and is used most strikingly when the haunting, chorale-like theme from Schubert’s song “Death and the Maiden” appears. The lead violinist plays music associated with the devil, including quotes from Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill” Sonata, and such disturbing sounds as grating pedal tones, created by pressing the bow strongly into the string as it is drawn across it. Conversely, the cello represents “the voice of God”, associated with the magical sound of crystal glasses, filled with water to different levels and played by bows drawn across their rims.