And that coincided with all of the protest movements around the country, which kind of led to a whole new kind of America. At a certain point, I realized that it was becoming a reflection of a lot of the anxiety and uncertainty of those days. There are many works throughout music history that are reactions to political events, but in this case it kind of crept up on me. I think that the upset in the world found its way into the music, which happens so frequently. It’s more than 40 years old now, but I remember that it was a very difficult piece to write. He conceived the work "as a kind of parable on our troubled contemporary world,” stating that “the image of the ‘black angel' was a conventional device used by early painters to symbolize the fallen angel." Crumb wrote recently: "Black Angels" was written at a time when America was convulsed by tremendous social upheaval and the trauma of Vietnam (the top of the score is inscribed “George Crumb, in tempore belli, 1970” ). He has received the Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy Award, a Fulbright Scholarship, Rockefeller and Ford grants, Guggenheim Fellowship, and numerous other awards. He has a long association with the University of Pennsylvania, where I am Director of the Chamber Music Department and casts a huge shadow despite retiring before I arrived. George Crumb studied music in West Virginia, Illinois, and Germany before returning to study at the University of Michigan, from which he received his D.M.A. "Black Angels" fits in that last category for me and it will for you, too.
Other music I hear and think “huh?” but eventually become a fanatical convert (Bartók was once like this for me but I understand most people don’t have the time nor inclination to stick with music that is an acquired taste.) There is a third category of music that causes a visceral reaction and continues to reveal itself every time you hear it. I love some music the first time I hear it but then it starts to sour by the third time.
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