George Crumb was born in the United States in 1929. He studied at the University of Illinois and then at the University of Michigan with Ross Lee Finney (1954), at the Berkshire Music Center, and then in Berlin with Boris Blacher (1955-1956). He taught at the University of Colorado from 1959 to 1964, and began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania in 1965, where he would remain for thirty years. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1968 for Echoes of Time and the River for orchestra (1967), and the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in 1971, as well as awards from the Fromm, Guggenheim, Koussevitsky, and Rockefeller Foundations, a Prince Pierre de Monaco Gold Medal in 1989, and was named composer of the year by Musical America in 2004.

Crumb’s music is often characterized by a concision and austerity in the tradition of Webern, and marked by the influences of Debussy and of Eastern traditions; its highly original quality is anchored in its sonorities and its ritual and mystical dimensions, and displays an intense poetic sensibility. Many of his compositions are based on poems by Federico García Lorca: his four books of Madrigals for soprano, percussion, flute, harp, and double bass (Book I and II, 1965, III and IV, 1969) and two of the seven nocturnes of Night Music I (1963), as well as Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death for vocalists and ensemble (1968), Night of the Four Moons (1969), Ancient Voices of Children (1970), Federico’s Little Songs for Children (1986), and, more recently, two pieces from Spanish Songbook, The Ghosts of Alhambra (2008) and Sun and Shadow (2009).

To achieve the subtle effects of his unusual timbres, which reflect his desire to “contemplate eternal things”, Crumb developed new performance techniques and used both traditional and folk instruments. His mature style could first be heard in Cinq pièces pour piano from 1962. He produced numerous chamber music pieces in the 1960s, including Night Music II (1964), Eleven Echoes of Autumn (1965), Black Angels (in tempore belli), a reflection on the Vietnam War for electric string quartet (1970), Vox balaenae for flute, cello, and amplified piano (1973), and the cycle Makrokosmos, inspired by the signs of the Zodiac – I for piano, II for amplified piano, III for piano and percussion (1972-1974), and (IV-Celestial Mechanics, 1979).

After this period came his composition Star-Child for soprano and orchestra, directed by four conductors, each in a different tempo (1977), which won a Grammy Award for best contemporary composition when the recording was released in 2001, as well as Apparition for mezzo-soprano and piano (1979), Gnomic Variations for piano (1981), A Haunted Landscape for orchestra (1984), and The Sleeper for soprano and piano (1984).

In the 1990s and until he retired from teaching in 1997, George Crumb devoted most of his working time to his students. Quest for guitar and ensemble (1990-1994) and Mundus Canis (A Dog’s World), five humoresques for guitar and percussion (1998), were his main compositions in this period.

In addition to some pieces for piano, Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik, on a theme by Thelonious Monk (2002) and Otherworldly Resonances for two pianos (2003), his major cycle American Songbook was his main focus in the 2000s. It began in 2001 with Unto the Hills, followed by River of Life, A Journey Beyond Time, Winds of Destiny, and Voices from the Morning of the Earth; Voices from the Heartland, the cycle’s seventh piece, premiered in January 2012.