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George Crumb and the Alchemy of Sound: Essays on His Music. Edited by Steven Bruns and Ofer Ben-Amots. Colorado Springs, CO: Colorado College Music Press, 2005. [vii, 360 p. ISBN-13 978-093595-207-7. $36.] Illustrations, facsimiles, music examples.
This new collection of thirteen essays and an introduction honors George Crumb on his seventy-fifth birthday. This publication is a major contribution to research on Crumb and follows a previous collection of essays (Don Gillespie, George Crumb: Profile of a Composer [New York: C. F. Peters, 1986]), and a bio-bibliography (David Cohen, George Crumb: A Bio-bibliography [Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002]). Still lacking is a single analytical monograph on the composer. The present volume comprises writings that range from personal to analytical, including valuable and detailed testimonies and analyses by performers, a flutist (Tracey Schmidt, essay no. 9), and a horn player and transcriber of Crumb's music (Robert Patterson, essay no. 10). The collection is multidisciplinary, with a contribution by a linguist exploring the Crumb-Lorca connection (Linda L. Elman, essay no. 2), and an investigation into the link between music and the visual arts (Michael D. Grace, essay no. 7). Each author is acknowledged with a biographical...