![]() ![]() His final completed composition proved to be, in typically unconventional fashion, a percussion quintet, Kronos-Kryptos (2019, revised in 2021 after the composer made a recovery from a stroke). In his own generation, Crumb’s exploratory approach was akin to that of another Hungarian, Gyorgy Ligeti.Īmplified piano was the medium for Crumb’s last major collection, the two volumes of Metamorphoses (2015-20), 20 “fantasy-pieces after celebrated paintings”, inspired by the works of artists ranging from Whistler and Van Gogh to Klee and Jasper Johns. Indeed, Makrokosmos vol 3 (1974), subtitled Music for a Summer Evening, used two amplified pianos and two percussionists to create its by turns hypnotic and evocative soundscapes. The Hungarian composer’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (1937) was a formative influence, as was, at a more fundamental level, the music of the Viennese serialist Anton Webern. Its title pointed to a counterpart at several removes in the six volumes of character pieces for piano, Mikrokosmos, by Béla Bartók. The use of the amplified piano, sometimes accompanied by percussion, was a recurrent fixture in Crumb’s work from then on, most vividly in the four collections of illustrative pieces inspired by the Zodiac and entitled Makrokosmos (1972-79). Photograph: Keith Beaty/Toronto Star/Getty Images ![]() George Crumb producing sounds from wineglasses, 1974. ![]()
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