George Crumb

George Crumb ( born October 24, 1929 in Charleston, West Virginia) is an American composer.

Crumb achieved by use of unusual vocal and instrumental techniques, a wealth of tonal colors. He studied at the American composer Ross Lee Finney and Boris Blacher in Berlin. Later he taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder and from 1965 to 1997 at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

In addition to numerous other awards and scholarships ( such as the BMI Student Composer Awards), he received the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Echoes of Time and the River. Most of his vocal works - including his four madrigal madrigal collections (1965 and 1969 ), Night of the Four Moons (1969) and Ancient Voices of Children (1970 ) - set to music verses of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. His string quartet Black Angels, Thirteen images from the dark country (1970 ) for electrically amplified instruments may be considered the work of the newer quartet literature. In A Haunted Landscape (1984 ) for electronically amplified piano and orchestra he created through the use of instruments such as Chinese temple gongs, steel drums or chopping boards and moments of silence unusual moods.