George Crumb, influential 20th-century composer and author of sounds tranquil and horrifying, dies at 92

George Crumb, 92, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer who inspired generations with his keen use of concert hall theatrics and embrace of unusual instrumental techniques, died Sunday. His death, at home in Media, was announced by his record label, Bridge Records.

Mr. Crumb was widely considered one of the 20th century’s major composers, and he continued to produce music well into the 21st. Born in West Virginia, he spent most of his career in and around Philadelphia, teaching at the University of Pennsylvania and authoring an impressive series of scores that shattered conventions in classical music.

In the long, crowded arc of 20th-century music, Mr. Crumb’s influence was vast and profound.

“My gosh, when Ancient Voices of Children came out, plus Black Angels and Music for a Summer Evening, but especially Ancient Voices, it was shocking,” said James Freeman, founder of Philadelphia new music group Orchestra 2001, which had a three-decade-plus relationship with Mr. Crumb. “Here was this extraordinarily difficult music, imaginative music, that always had a mysterious side, a dark side, that was beautiful in its own right. People said, ‘I want to listen to more music like this.’”

Ancient Voices of Children premiered at the Library of Congress in 1970, and was scored for forces that included soprano, boy soprano, amplified piano, toy piano, and musical saw. The performers were instructed to yell and whisper. A recording of it became one of the best sellers of 20th-century music.

“It changed the course of creative careers for so many young composers at that time,” said Freeman.

Mr. Crumb was influenced by, and collected sounds from, just about anywhere and anything: nature and his childhood, Asian music, current events, and Debussy, Bartók, and Mahler. He was particularly drawn to Federico García Lorca, whose text is used in Ancient Voices of Children. His music could be peaceful, sparse, eerie, or downright horrifying. The “Threnody I: Night of the Electric Insects” from Black Angels was put to good use in the soundtrack to The Exorcist.

There were aspects of his compositional approach that were arguably more radical than the unusual percussion and atmospheric effects. Along with George Rochberg, who also taught at Penn, Mr. Crumb was not afraid of traditional tonality.

“The two Georges had enormous influence in totally different ways,” said Freeman. Their music gave composers “permission to do extraordinary things.”

In Black Angels for amplified string quartet, the cellist plays a theme from Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet while holding the instrument backward and players strike a Chinese gong, use their bows to play the sides of wine and champagne glasses, shout numbers in various languages, and whistle.

But close your eyes and listen, and “what you’re left with is a sensuous piece from 1970 whose sounds are surprising and original,” wrote this critic of a 2000 performance of the work by the Cassatt String Quartet. “Black Angels is largely about the emotional consequences of timbral possibilities, and it is still stunningly successful in blowing apart expectations of what can happen when two violinists, a violist and cellist get together.”

Philadelphia composer Jennifer Higdon, who studied with Mr. Crumb for five years at Penn, traces her predilection for unusual sounds and extended techniques to her teacher — things like her use of 50 bells at the end of Blue Cathedral.

It was one simple thing he said that altered the way she thought about music, she recalled.

“He said, ‘You know, Jennifer, the only thing that matters in the end is how it sounds.’ You study form and structure and things like that, but to have someone say that, it made me step back and say, ‘Maybe I should start with the idea of sound, with what sounds interesting.”

His influence on his students, she said, didn’t extend to a demand for stylistic orthodoxy.

“You could tell there was pressure to not write tonally at that time, but George always felt it was important for people to find their own voices,” said Higdon. “All of George’s students really sounded different. They sounded like themselves.”

Among the composers he taught were Christopher Rouse, Uri Caine, Osvaldo Golijov, and Margaret Brouwer.

Amiable and modest with an unassuming mien, Mr. Crumb seemed unable to account for the swath he cut through the frontiers of new music.

“I hardly know any facts about the construction of my music,” he told The Inquirer in 2012 at age 82. “I’m sure there is some rational process involved.”

In fact, the highly detailed scores he produced — some in the shape of a spiral or a peace sign — were greeted by musicians as works of art in themselves.

Born on Oct. 24, 1929 in Charleston, W. Va., to parents who were musicians, Mr. Crumb studied music early on. He attended Mason College of Music and Fine Arts, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1950, and received a master’s degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was awarded a Fulbright to study at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, and went on to earn a doctorate at the University of Michigan.

He taught composition and theory in Penn’s music department starting in 1965, and in 1968 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in music for Echoes of Time and the River. He received a long string of fellowships — from the Rockefeller Foundation, Koussevitzky Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Guggenheim Foundation. He retired from Penn in 1997.

There was a time when his output seemed at its end. He didn’t write much in the 1990s, and then, in 2002, he started up again, producing a series of works for Orchestra 2001 inspired by his West Virginia childhood — with a significant twist. He scored his work … Unto the Hills for a female vocalist (the premiere featured his daughter, actress and singer Ann Crumb) singing tunes of Appalachia, but with percussionists moving among more than 60 instruments, including Tibetan prayer stones, a wind machine, and Thai wooden buffalo-bell.

“They’re not traditional arrangements,” said Crumb with his trademark sense of understatement.

He ended up writing seven installments in his “American Songbook” series.

His influence continues, but as for specific artistic heirs, it would be hard for any one particular composer to hew to Mr. Crumb’s voice.

“I think he has hundreds of them,” said Freeman. “For almost every composer who has followed him, there is something of him in that music.”

Mr. Crumb is survived by his wife, Elizabeth May, and sons David and Peter. Daughter Ann Crumb died in 2019. A memorial service is being planned for late March.