Avant–garde: new and unusual or experimental ideas, especially in the arts, or in the presenters of the ideas themselves.
George Crumb: (b. 1929) is one of the most frequently performed composers in today's musical world. Crumb is the winner of Grammy and Pulitzer Prizes, and continues to compose new scores that enrich the lives of all who come in contact with his profoundly humanistic art.
George Crumb Madrigals, book 1 “Los muertos llevan alas de musgo” (pages 530-532)
Terms you will see in the score:
-Glissando: performed with a gliding effect by sliding one or more fingers rapidly over the keys of a piano or strings of a harp.
Vibrato: a pulsating effect, produced in singing by the rapid reiteration of emphasis on a tone, and on bowed instruments by a rapid change of pitch corresponding to the vocal tremolo.
-Pizzicato tremolo: Tremolo notation along with the term pizzicato, indicates the player should use pizzicato tremolo. To do this, the finger moves up and down, rapidly plucking the notes for a tremolo effect.
-Wafting: gentle movement of sound
-Modo ordinario: Modo means "manner" or "style" and ordinario means ordinary. Modo ordinario means play in the ordinary way (often used after an unusual way of playing). 
.jpg)
Style of George Crumb’s compositions:
-Crumb uses a synthesis of 20th century techniques, for example:
-Use of non western insturments and unorthodox performance methods on conventional insturments
-Ostinato: repeated melodic or rhythmic figure throughout the piece
-Indeterminate music: leaving some things up to the performer
-A-tonalily: the absence of functional harmony as a primary structural element.
-Organized sounds
-Electronic music: music performed using synthesizers and other electronic instruments.
-Irregular meter: asymmetrical meters
-Silences that may or may not be decided by composer
Sounds and textures:
Look at Vox Balaene for three masked players, take a look at the performance notes tab before moving on to the score and recording tab.
-Amplification and reverb used to create a surrealistic effect.
-George Crumb’s composition Vox Balaenae for three masked players is written for an electric flute, electric cello and electric piano. In Variation IV when the flute and cello enter the words “broad with passion” are written underneath their melodic lines; instructing the performer to play broader is a way to amplify their sound. In Variation 1, measure 1 we see in quotes “seagull effect” underneath a gliss written in the electric cello part.
-Extended instrumental techniques:
knocking on instruments, glass rods, bowing over
fingerboard, scratch tone, “pedal tones.”
-Crumb wrote in the “performance notes” for the piano player using a glass rod on the piano strings in Mesozoic Variation IV of the Sea-Theme. He writes, the glass rod needs to produce an ultimately jangling and distorted sound, and more than one may be needed to employ the greatest effect. He also notes the steel frame construction and how that will affect how the strings will sound.
-In Crumb’s Sea Theme we see examples of pedal tones in the electric piano in measure 1-4. In measure 3 we see an example of a rapid gliss over the paino strings with the performer’s fingertips.
George Crumb Madrigals, book 1 “Los muertos llevan alas de musgo” (pages 530-532)
-Use of voice: speaking, shouting, whispering,
chanting, tongue clicks.
We see examples of intense whispers, use of voice in unorthodox ways in measures 6 and 9. In measure 11 we see examples of large pitch bending in the vocal part while the vocalist is chanting words.
Forms used to analyze Vox Balaenae:
To see the score: http://www.lunanova.org/WhaleFlash/whaleflash.html
George Crumb’s composition Vox Balaenae for three masked players can be organized by movement, using of small pitch class sets.
(Pitch class set: a list of pitches independent of octave displacement and enharmonic spelling)
(Octave displacement: the displacement of tones into octave registers that are not their referent position.)
(Enharmonic spelling: Some key signatures have an enharmonic equivalent that represents a scale identical in sound but spelled differently. The number of sharps and flats of two enharmonically equivalent keys sum to twelve.)
John Cage: (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) Cage created sound for performances and to investigate the ways music composed through chance procedures could become something beautiful. Many of Cage’s ideas about what music could be were inspired by Marcel Duchamp, who revolutionized twentieth-century art by presenting everyday, unadulterated objects in museum settings as finished works of art, which were called “found art,” or ready-mades by later scholars. Like Duchamp, Cage found music around him and did not necessarily rely on expressing something from within.
Sonatas and Interludes Nos. 1 and 5 (Pages 517-520)
Terms you will see in the score:
-Loco: The Italian musical term loco, or “at place,” is used to cancel a previous octave command such as 8va.
-Pedal
-Una corda: the soften pedal of the piano
-Ritardo: to gradually slow down
Styles of John Cage's compositions:
-Indeterminate music: leaving some things up to the performer
-A-tonalily: the absence of functional harmony as a primary structural element.
-Organized sounds
Sounds and textures:
This example shows the chart of objects placed on the strings of the piano in order to produce certain percussive sounds. (pages 517-518)
-Sounds chanced upon via the radio waves
John Cage attempted to show this in this video performance of his composition Water Walk:
-Sounds from everyday life and the intended sounds of music.
John Cage composed a part in his piece Water Walk for a duck whistle in a bowl of water
Forms used:
Music for Marcel Duchamp by John Cage
Cage drew out the notes in “sets” (similar to a pitch class set) that would be used in his composition Music For Marcel Duchamp. (see below)