George Crumb

George Crumb (born October 24, 1929) is an American composer of avant-garde music. He is noted as an explorer of unusual timbres, alternative forms of notation, and extended instrumental and vocal techniques. Examples include seagull effect for the cello (e.g. Vox Balaenae), metallic vibrato for the piano (e.g. Five Pieces for Piano), and using a mallet to play the strings of a contrabass (e.g. Madrigals, Book I), among numerous others.

Crumb was born in Charleston, West Virginia, and began to compose at an early age. He studied music first at the Mason College of Music in Charleston where he received his bachelor's degree in 1950. He obtained his master's degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and then briefly studied in Berlin before returning to the United States to study at the University of Michigan, from which he received his D.M.A. in 1959.

Crumb has earned his living primarily from teaching. His first teaching job was at a college in Virginia, before he became professor of piano and composition at the University of Colorado in 1958. In 1965 he began a long association with the University of Pennsylvania, becoming Annenberg Professor of the Humanities in 1983. Some of his most prominent students include Margaret Brouwer, Uri Caine, Christopher Rouse, Osvaldo Golijov, Jennifer Higdon, Cynthia Cozette Lee, Yen Lu, James Primosch, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Ofer Ben-Amots, Morris Rosenzweig, Andrew Frank and Gerald Levinson.

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