The music uses the extremes of the instruments’ registers as well as extended techniques such as bowing on the fingerboard above the fingers and tapping the strings with thimbles. The score bears two inscriptions: in tempore belli (in time of war) and “ Finished on Friday the Thirteenth, March, 1970”.īlack Angels is primarily written for (in Crumb’s words) “ electric string quartet.” Though generally played by amplified acoustic instruments, the work is occasionally performed on specially constructed electronic string instruments. The work draws from an arsenal of sounds including shouting, chanting, whistling, whispering, gongs, maracas, and crystal glasses. The performers also play maracas, tam-tams and water-tuned crystal goblets, the latter played with the bow for the “glass-harmonica” effect in God-Music.īlack Angels for string quartet was written as a response to the Vietnam War. This surrealism is heightened by the use of certain unusual string effects, e.g., pedal tones (the intensely obscene sounds of the Devil-Music) bowing on the “wrong” side of the strings (to produce the viol-consort effect) trilling on the strings with thimble-capped fingers. The amplification of the stringed instruments in Black Angels is intended to produce a highly surrealistic effect. Henry Fuseli Satan Starting from the Touch of Ithuriel’s Spear (Satan flieht, von Ithuriels Speer beruht) 1779. The work abounds in conventional musical symbolisms such as the Diabolus in Musica (the interval of the tritone) and the Trillo Di Diavolo (the “Devil’s Trill”, after Tartini). William BlakeĪt certain points in the score there occurs a kind of ritualistic counting in various languages, including German, French, Russian, Hungarian, Japanese and Swahili.There are several allusions to tonal music in Black Angels: a quotation from Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” quartet (in the Pavana Lachrymae and also faintly echoed on the last page of the work) an original Sarabanda, which is stylistically synthetic the sustained B-major tonality of God-Music and several references to the Latin sequence Dies Irae (“Day of Wrath”). William Blake ‘The Good and Evil Angels’, 1795/?c.1805. An important pitch element in the work – descending E, A, and D-sharp – also symbolizes the fateful numbers 7-13. These “magical” relationships are variously expressed e.g., in terms of length, groupings of single tones, durations, patterns of repetition, etc. The numerological symbolism of Black Angels, while perhaps not immediately perceptible to the ear, is nonetheless quite faithfully reflected in the musical structure. The three stages of this voyage are Departure (fall from grace), Absence (spiritual annihilation) and Return (redemption). The underlying structure of Black Angels is a huge arch-like design which is suspended from the three “Threnody” pieces. The image of the “black angel” was a conventional device used by early painters to symbolize the fallen angel.
The numerous quasi-programmatic allusions in the work are therefore symbolic, although the essential polarity – God versus Devil – implies more than a purely metaphysical reality. The score bears two inscriptions: in tempore belli (in time of war) and “Finished on Friday the Thirteenth, March, 1970”.īlack Angels was conceived as a kind of parable on our troubled contemporary world. George Crumb, 1990Ĭuarteto Latinoamericano, Juan Pablo Izquierdoīlack Angels is probably the only quartet to have been inspired by the Vietnam War. There were terifying things in the air… they found their way into Black Angels. Electric string quartet Thirteen images from the dark land