"Kronos-Kryptos" (2020), quatre tableaux pour quintette de percussion, est la dernière pièce composée par George Crumb.
. Lors de ce concert, enregistré le 5 novembre, l'Ensemble Intercontemporain était dirigé par Matthias Pintscher.
La pièce, magnifique, était sublimée parfois par les quintes de toux du public.
Heureusement, trois ans plus tard, le label Bridge publie un enregistrement studio de cette pièce, dans le
d'une intégrale commencée au début des années 90.
Accompagnée de nouvelles versions de "Processional" pour piano (1983) une version avec les six passages alternatifs d'"effets spéciaux" et une sans, jouée par le dédicataire de l’œuvre, Gilbert Kalish.
Crumb aimait bien utiliser les jeux dans les cordes, frottements...
Autre pièce, la sonate pour violoncelle, une œuvre de jeunesse (1955).
"Kronos-Kryptos", extrait des notes de pochette du disque, signées Steve Bruns, professeur à l'Université de Colorado Boulder.
Considering his long fascination with time and memory in music, it’s not surprising that one of George Crumb’s final works would be entitled Kronos-Kryptos, a Greek title that was in his mind for many years (Time-Secret is the composer’s translation). In 2005, he began a version for percussion septet, but finished only one movement. He completed the quintet version in 2018 for the Lincoln Center Chamber Players, who gave the world premiere at Alice Tully Hall on April 14, 2019, in celebration of the composer’s 90th birthday year. Crumb revised the fourth movement in 2020, and that revision is presented here.
The first movement is a reincarnation of Easter Dawning, a 1992 composition for carillon. According to the composer, his title was meant to capture “both the jubilant and the more reflective aspects of the music;” in recasting the carillon version, he expanded both aspects. The main melodic and harmonic ideas derive from the symmetrical octatonic scale (alternating whole-and half-steps), a favorite means of highlighting the resonant bell sounds found in so many Crumb compositions. The bright carillon is here magnified with a panoply of metallic percussion instruments. The “joyously resounding” passages add layers, and multiple instruments imitate the original material at new pitch levels and with altered rhythms. Each flurry of bell sounds is allowed to ring for several seconds, often with sleighbells shivering quietly in the background. Low register sounds are intermittently added by bass drum and large tamtam. Because of the softer dynamic levels afforded by the quintet, Crumb was able to add longer reflective passages than in the carillon version. Most notably, during the last part of the movement, soft music that features Japanese temple bells, vibraphones, and tubular bells builds gradually toward the final, brilliant conclusion.
Next to the Poco Adagio tempo marking for the second movement, “A Ghostly Barcarolle,” Crumb writes “gently undulating (hauntingly, like a spectral apparition),” and the 9/16 meter recalls the characteristic rocking rhythm of the traditional Venetian boat song. (In the fifth piece of his Makrokosmos, Volume I (1972), Crumb identified himself as the Phantom Gondolier; and the penultimate movement of Night Music I (1963) is a Barcarola.) From the opening bars, Crumb’s water music is visual as well as aural: one percussionist produces eerie glissando effects on the “water gong” by executing a continuous tremolo on a small tamtam, while lowering and raising it in a tub of water; another player pours water into a few inches of water in a bucket (rhythm and dynamics are carefully specified!). Adding to the uncanny atmosphere are hushed sounds produced by spring coil drum, surf drum, and bowed tamtam. As the movement unfolds, gently rising and falling arpeggiated figures are exchanged by two vibraphones and tubular bells. Intermittent maraca figures and strokes on cymbals and tamtams sound very quietly underneath. Crumb discreetly adds other instruments, including a most unusual passage featuring Caribbean steel drum (doubling the tubular bell part), very large bass drum, and a coin scraped across a large tamtam. At the end, a slightly longer version of the opening water music returns, then drifts into silence.
The third movement, “Drummers of the Apocalypse,” provides a thunderous contrast. The wild energy is reminiscent of “Musica Apocalyptica” from Crumb’s Star-Child for voices and large orchestra. In that 1977 work, a galloping ostinato for four players furiously drumming tomtoms leads to the climax and is designated “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” The present movement is led by a turbulent ostinato passed around several instruments: two timpani (the pedal is used continuously to produce rising and falling glissandi), four tomtoms, four sizes of bass drum, conga drums, lujon, and log drum. The driving momentum commences after a short introduction, during which bass and conga drums alternate with Chinese cymbals and tamtams. Above the persistent low-register drumming, clipped figures are interjected by guiros, claves, wood blocks, tambourine, and shouted syllables. In the background are long tremolos on sizzle cymbal, scrapes and strokes on the large tamtam, and, more prominently, rising and falling patterns on thunder sheet. Just before the buildup to the final, loud climax, there is a brief lull, when we hear the eerie “singing” of medium bass drum above timpano glissandi and accented clacks of Japanese Kabuki blocks. These sounds are punctuated by the ostinato drumming pattern, flexitone glissandi, and brilliant clusters in the crotales. In the sorrowful time after the death of his daughter Ann, on October 31, 2019, Crumb pondered composing a musical memorial. Eventually, he decided to recompose the fourth and last movement of Kronos-Kryptos, simplifying and concentrating the expressive qualities of the original version. As the title suggests, “Appalachian Echoes (Look Homeward, Angel)” is suffused with memories. In its restrained intensity, the music is profoundly moving. Throughout the movement, two percussionists play “The Cosmic Music of a Starlit Night” near the edge of silence (Lento molto misterioso, “as if suspended in time, with a preternatural calm”). In fact, they begin in silence itself, only miming the gestures of playing. After fifteen seconds or so, their music becomes audible: quiet sonorities on vibraphone, Japanese temple bells, large tamtam, Chinese cymbals, spring coil drum, and three kinds of wind chimes. During each repetition, the two players whisper in imitative dialog, “Look homeward, angel, . . .look homeward.” After the mysterious introduction, the other three players project a separate, asynchronous music that is divided into five sections (ABABA). In the original version of the movement, Crumb had incorporated fragments of six tunes from his seven American Songbook cycles, but the revision uses only “Poor Wayfaring Stranger.” The tune and words held special personal significance. In 2001, Ann had suggested that her father write a cycle of Appalachian songs for her, and the result was Unto the Hills, which opens and closes with “Poor Wayfaring Stranger.” An outpouring of songs followed—many composed with Ann’s voice in mind—with Crumb’s last Songbook completed in 2010. In the three A sections of this fourth movement, the Caribbean steel drum murmurs “Poor Wayfaring Stranger” tune fragments, one phrase at a time, with the vibraphone echoing the first few intervals of the tune before wandering chromatically astray. In the last A section, the vibraphone echoes the steel drum’s tune more clearly. Atmospheric sounds are added by marimba, spring coil drum, medium tamtam, and large Chinese temple gong.
Two B sections serve as interludes, which Crumb calls “Forest Murmurs.” Rather than alluding to Wagner’s Siegfried, he evokes the sounds of the woods and echoing river valley around Charleston, West Virginia, where he grew up. After a quiet rustling in the vibraphone, the musicians imitate the buzzing cicada’s voice, mournful hoots of the owl, and the croaking frog. At the end, tubular bells softly chime the tune while three of the players whisper “I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger, a-trav’ling through this world of woe, I’m just a-going over home.” The other two players continue, for another thirty seconds, the slowly revolving music of the starlit cosmos, and then conclude as they began, by miming gestures of playing, in total silence. In remembering back over nearly twenty years, George Crumb surely felt the painful irony of having heard his daughter sing “I’m going there to see my father, . . . I’m going there to see my mother, . . . a-going over Jordan,” where she arrived before them.