George Crumb
Composer
American,
1929-
GEORGE CRUMB was born 24 October 1929 in Charleston, West Virginia. He received his D.M.A. at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he studied composition with Ross Lee Finney. Crumb has received numerous awards, honors and commissions (Pulitzer Prize 1968; International Rostrum of Composers (UNESCO) Award 1971; Fromm, Guggenheim, Koussevitzky and Rockefeller Foundations) and is a member of the National Institute of Arts & Letters. Presently he is composer in residence at the University of Pennsylvania. Crumb’s works bridge profundities, silence and noise, between the commonplace and the cosmic, and between tradition and the avant-garde.
Selected works by George Crumb:
“A gentleman brought music to his lady's window, who hated him,...and when he persisted, she threw stones at him. Whereupon a friend of his that was within his company, said to him; "What greater honour can you have to your music, than that stones come about you, as they did to Orpheus."”
--Francis Bacon