Black Angels

Chamber Music Concert

Sunday, October 4, 2015, 3:00 p.m.
Schaver Recital Hall, Wayne State University, 480 W Hancock St, Detroit, MI 48201

The 2015 American Romanian Festival marks the Festival’s 10 Year Anniversary. Help celebrate the occasion by joining us at Wayne State University, October 4, 2015, for the chamber music concert “Black Angels. The performance begins with Crumb’s electric “Black Angels” String Quartet, conceived as a parable on our troubled contemporary world. Then, experience the soulful sounds of Porumbescu’s masterpiece, Ballad for Violin and Piano. The evening concludes with the adventerous sounds of Brahms’s Piano Quintet in f minor, Op. 34.

Things were turned upside down. There were terrifying things in the air. … They found their way into “Black Angels.”

The work portrays a voyage of the soul. The three stages of this voyage are Departure (fall from grace), Absence (spiritual annihilation), and Return (redemption).

The numerological symbolism of “Black Angels,” while perhaps not immediately perceptible to the ear, is nonetheless quite faithfully reflected in the musical structure. These ‘magical’ relationships are variously expressed, e.g., in terms of length, groupings of single tones, durations, patterns of repetition, etc. … There are several allusions to tonal music: a quotation from Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden: quartet, an original ‘Sarabanda,’ the sustained B-major tonality of ‘God-music,’ and several references to the Latin sequence ‘Dies irae’ (Day of Wrath). The work abounds in conventional musical symbolisms such as the ‘Diabolus in musica’ (the interval of the tritone) and the ‘Trillo del diavolo’ (the Devil’s Trill, after Tartini).

—George Crumb

Concert Program

George Crumb (b. 1929)
“Black Angels” String Quartet (1970)
I. Departure
1. THRENODY I: Night of the Electric Insects,
2. Sounds of Bones and Flutes
3. Lost Bells
4. Devil-music
5. Danse Macabre (Duo alternativo: Dies Irae)
II. Absence
6. Pavana Lachrymae (Der Tod und das Mädchen) (Solo obbligato: Insect Sounds)
7. THRENODY II: BLACK ANGELS!
8. Sarabanda de la Muerte Oscura (Solo obbligato: Insect Sounds)
9. Lost Bells (Echo) (Duo alternativo: Sounds of Bones and Flutes)
III. Return
10. [Solo: Aria accompagnata] God-music
11. Ancient Voices
12. Ancient Voices (Echo)
13. THRENODY III: Night of the Electric Insects

– INTERMISSION –

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Piano Quintet in f minor, Op. 34 (1864)
I. Allegro non troppo
II. Andante, un poco adagio
III. Scherzo: Allegro
IV. Finale: Poco sostenuto – Allegro non troppo – Presto, non troppo

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