George Krum biography

Krama Author of the article: Nazarenko Dmitry Ivanovich. The composer, as the Creator, is always looking for new ways to embody his plan, looking for expressive means, often located outside the traditional musical language. And where is the line that passes between the sound vibrations of music and what is something important to us and sometimes can change our worldview?

How and in what ways do composers encrypt a concept in music? And how is it possible that the sounding seem to be a perfect chaos for a “stranger” and a clearly built by musical reality for the “understanding”, “seeking” listener? The twentieth century has become a turning point in world history: ideologies and regimes in socio-political life, the trends in art have never replaced each other so quickly.

Mystics associate this with a change in the eons - periods of time lasting two thousand years, approximately corresponding to the astrological "era". Traditionally, global changes in the cultural and religious paradigm as a whole and in art in particular were associated with the change of ER. After all, it is art that represents its time, it is art that reflects what is at the moment - relevance and modernity.

One of those who are trying to realize his time in sounds is the American composer George Krum. George Henry Krum the Younger was born on October 24 in Charleston, West Virginia, in a musical family. His father was a professional clarinetist, arranger and from time to time by the conductor of the orchestra, who accompanied the sessions of silent films in the cinema. Mother, Vivian, played the cello with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra.

At home, chamber music often sounded. From an early age, Krum Sr. teaches his son to play the clarinet. In addition to classes on the tool, the boy helps his father rewrite orchestral scores. So George Krum begins to study the scores of various composers. He later noted that it was then that he had a special attitude to the visual aspect of the musical recording. Also, the musical formation of the future composer greatly influenced the radio: there was no large collection of records at home, but there was a huge selection of radio stations that broadcast the music of various directions.

In his early years, George decided that his whole life would be associated with music. From the age of 10, he begins to show his composer abilities. As he himself described, “it was slightly in the style of Mozart” [2, p. It was quite natural for him to copy the styles of composers such as Chopin, Beethoven, Brahms and Bartok. He was not a “closed” child, but the school classes were never interesting to him, and teachers could often find George to compose music during mathematics or English lessons.

Already at school, he wrote a sufficient amount of chamber music. In addition, Krum Jr. loved to organize musical groups from familiar classmates, which were a semblance of modern "garage" bands. It is also worth noting that the composer was greatly influenced by the folk music of Western Virginia. This was manifested in the subsequent choice of instruments, usually not used in classical music.

Future compositions included: Banjo, Vargan, Stone Bench, Gusli and musical saw. He was also very inspired by the sounds of nature. George Krum is known for his unusual and exact scores. One of the people who had a huge impact on him was the teacher of the University of Michigan, Ross Lee Finnie, who inspired his students with the need to create an accurate and clear note record, accompanied by notes and explanations.

It was an important lesson. Krum recalled: “He conveyed a special attitude to the musical record, as well as the instruction on how to develop the ability to use inner rumor when you write than to represent music in an abstract form” [2, p. Subsequently, the critics who found the compositions of Kram “not very musical” will celebrate it pedantically and gracefully written scores. The Krama’s creativity is completely uncharacteristic both in terms of sound design and the ideological sending of the “Black Angels” quartet written in the year.

He absorbs almost all the main techniques of the composer’s individual technique and, having analyzed it, you can understand the author’s methods of handling sound and notation. We turn to the content of the quartet, many suggested that the work is dedicated to the Vietnamese War: next to the composer’s authorship in brackets, it is: “The Time of War” Tempore Belli, which is also a reference to the work of J.

Haydna Missa in Tempore Belli. Krum himself expressed that the artist is the sum of the events that absorb him, and therefore, undoubtedly, the work “absorbed” the atmosphere of war - one of the tragic episodes in the history of the world. Therefore, for a more clear idea of ​​the content of this quartet, it is important to represent the atmosphere of the beginning of x. So, in music there is a general enthusiasm for esoteric teachings: everything is from “The Beatles”, “Rolling Stones”, D.

Bowie to “Led Zeppelin” - “weave” this subject into their work.It was a time of liberation from the oppression of conservatism, the time of counter -culture, which ideologically not only contrasted itself with public ideals, but cast doubt on and rethought the prevailing cultural dogmas, created its own system of norms and values. And although Krum was clearly not expressed “for” or “against” new movements, one way or another it influenced his attitude and reflected in his music we turn to the score [3].

Its full name is “Black Angels. Thirteen images from the Dark World. ” The score opens with “Performance Note” - instructions and instructions, as the work should be executed. One of the most important, according to the composer, the requirements is the obligatory electro-acceleration of the tools: they should be equipped with built-in pickups, and in the absence of them, they are reinforced with microphones.

The instrumental composition of the ensemble is unusual: each musician, in addition to the main string instrument, played on the instruments of percussion, as well as on glass glasses, the sounds of which were extracted with a bow. In paragraph 9 of “Performance Note”, aspects of the original notation of the composer are revealed. There are microchromatisms - sounds at a distance of a quarter of the tone from each other.

The innovation is also fixing the duration of notes: instead of the traditional grouping, the exact time of the execution of a particular group in seconds is indicated. A number of composer instructions are completed by the plan for the placement of performers and tools on the stage.

The following is the Program program, which precedes the musical text and visually represent the structure of the work. It is an arched structure: thirteen numbers that are connected to each other arrows. Each number has its own numerical value, a certain numerological property. In addition, thirteen numbers are grouped into three parts, which, according to the author, are embodied by three stages of the soul of the soul - “departure” of sinfulness, “absence” of spiritual destruction and “return” atonement, as well as the struggle of God and the devil, manifested in contrasting numbers 7 and so, the quarter has three parts, temporary “patterns” of seven, four, four, four, four, four, four, four, four, four, four, four, four, four, four, four, four Three, thirteen seconds, pauses lasting thirteen seconds.

Each number also has its own numerical value, the location of the numbers is subordinated to the laws of symmetry. Thus, the visual appearance of the score, in our opinion, reveals a connection with numerology and twin myths as one of the deepest foundations of the composition. The main characters of the twin myths - Gemini - are the opposite of each other. So the fundamental phenomena of the world are symbolically embodied - good and evil, day and night.

These opposites are in a state of struggle, at the same time being two sides of one coin. It can be assumed that here Krum expresses the dual essence of God: it is for this that he gives the work to numerological properties. The opposition of numbers 7 and 13 in essence, good and evil, God and the devil is the essence of the whole composition. The influence of numerology [1], which manifested in a special attitude to the number, is completely clear.

Here it is necessary to make a brief overview of the value of numbers. George Krum himself often said that he is well acquainted with the works of K. Yung [2] in his electric string quartet Krum sets the Jungian “mythical order” based first on intuitive, and then on more conscious incarnations of archetypal numbers 7 and 13, which corresponds to the neo-mythological “conscious appropriation of the unconscious discovery”: “when I wrote“ Black Angels ”, it occurred to me that these numbers appeared all the time in my sketches, and it was then that I decided to use them [1].

Dolly Kessner claimed that the number 7 is represented by seven steps, or pure quint, symbolically represents the “God-life”, while 13 half-ton or minor nonona means “death-devil” [4, p. On the other hand, Krum itself deciphers its connection between the number 7 and the Triton: “In“ Black Angels ”“ I used a Triton that corresponds to the number 7 ”[1]. During an interview at the University of Rutgers, the composer painted a sketch illustrating what he later called the “main sound”, or “Titon axis of the work”.

From the example, it is clear that Krum uses letters to assign the number 7 F on the sketch, while subtraction 13 - 7 still gives 6 as an interval expression of the Titon. The numerical properties and the principle of symmetry are projected to the intonation-thematic level of the quartet. It must be emphasized that Black Angels musical tissue is subordinated to complex numerical logic.

Thus, each marked number is indicated by the duration in seconds, as well as the number of repetitions. The total number of eighth notes in motion is 91 - the exact mathematical value obtained by the multiplication of two fatal numbers is 7 and the first element: [1] the central element of the CE of the system is the term Y.It can be called a certain “intonation capsule”, which will subsequently be deployed, for example, in the second element, which is a series of thirteen tones repeated the sound of DIS: as the third element is a quote from the medieval sequence “Dies IRAE” - a musical element - an chordal of the initial intonation thesis: an image "Devil-Music" J.

Krum thinks in the genre of cadence. Cadence is a mandatory section of the concert in which the soloist demonstrates his virtuosity, the technique of the game, the ability to improvise on previously sounding topics. Here, improvisation is manifested in the alternation of melodic and chord elements, the intonation basis of which are the intervals of the mind.

On the contrary, “God-Music” was resolved in the spirit of the Aria with the accompaniment. The electric cell is soloed, called the author of “Vox Deo” - “The voice of God”. This solo is an expressive melody, which begins with the “peak of the source” and combines melodious and declamation. The intonations m. The melody gradually strives to upward, “conquering” the top D3, on which the voice of God is calms down, is.

In addition, here is a quote from the “devilish trifles” by J. The composer resorts to original spatial work with sound, which “expands” from one tone into three sounds: another substantive layer of the quartet forms quotes, meticulously marked with Krama in the score. A quote is a musical and semantic sign from another work that enriches this essay. Liszt, K. One way or another, the semantics of all quotes are associated with infernal images, images of death.

Summing up some results of the work, we note the following important points: 1. To embody his plan, Krum is looking for special sonority, which are absent in the dark variety of modern academic music. Hence the special techniques of sound recovery on string instruments: a game of stand, characterized by a "growling" sound; Col Legno-"empty-step" sonority. In addition, special sound spheres give birth to: a game with a bow along the edge of a glass glass, a clatter with a tongue, pronouncing syllables and words, the phonic effects of the gong.

Thus, the composer creates a special sounding space that is different from the "familiar" music. KRAM is a composer who thinks non -standard.