George Crumb (b.1929)'s Makrokosmos is recognized as one of the masterpieces of twentieth century piano writing. Inexplicably, volume four of Makrokosmos, Crumb's only four-hand piano piece, is rarely studied by Crumb scholars. According to Crumb's program notes, his Makrokosmos is meant to be a hybrid of piano and orchestral sound. Crumb devised a list of signs and abbreviated letters to explain his specific instructions to the performers. The pianists who plan to perform Makrokosmos need to study Crumb's notations carefully in order to faithfully realize the composer's intentions. This dissertation examines the composer's treatment of four hands at the piano. In addition, a performer's analysis and practical "translation" of these techniques is provided, in the hopes of rendering this amazing piece more accessible to pianists in search of new and wonderful repertoire for piano four hands. It is also hoped that future composers will be inspired by Crumb's innovations and imaginative ideas.

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The purpose of this document is to investigate the influence of Bela Bartok's music, specifically the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, on George Crumb's Music for a Summer Evening. It concentrates on two specific areas: 1) the role of symmetry and 2) instrumentation. These two items were stressed during an interview with Crumb by the author, which is appended to the paper.

This thesis ventures into the world of twentieth century chamber music, specifically the trios written for flute, cello and piano. The first chapter discusses the history of the trio, tracing its development from the trio sonata of the Baroque Period to the accompanied sonatas and specifically the sonatas with flute and cello obbligato. Following the unpopularity of the genre throughout the Romantic period, its greater prominence in the Twentieth century is discussed, mentioning specific groups through whom the repertoire has been extended. Forty trios are grouped according to compositional styles. Six trios, each representing an example of a specific style period, have been selected for more detailed discussion, with particular reference to the various ways in which a sense of unity is achieved in each trio. The English composer Eugene Goossens uses impressionistic images, whole tone and chromatic scale patterns and other motifs to unify his trio: "Five Impressions of a Holiday". Nikolay Iosifovich Sil'vansky's "The Hedgehog and the Nightingale" is based on a Russian tale by Juri Jarmicha and uses a narrator. The three characters are represented by specific motivic and / or thematic material which is used throughout the trio. Günter Raphael's Trio-Suite op 44 is the only cyclic work unifying the two outer movements, without repeating any additional motivic material. Jean-Michel Damase condenses some of the material introduced in the opening Prelude in both the two Largo's and the two Arias in his "Sonate en Concert" of 1950. Karl Julius Marx builds his entire "Trio op 61" on a flexible six-note motif. Various movements in the trio" Vox Ba1aenae" by the American George Crumb are 1inked through the use of motives and characteristic instrumental colour. A comprehensive list of 180 twentieth century trios has been compiled, including details of dedications, commissions and first performances. 163 composers from twenty countries, are represented.

During the 20th century, chamber works for harp expanded to include significantly different instrumentations, like flute, voice and harp. Indeed, a body of works for flute, voice, and harp began to develop mainly through the commissioning efforts of ensembles comprised of these instruments. This study of George Crumb's Federico's Little Songs for Children for flutes, soprano, and harp considers the unique advantages and challenges of this instrumentation and offers specific suggestions for performance. Attention to various compositional elements of Federico's Little Songs for Children, especially as they relate to the text, is also helpful in preparing to perform this work. The form, pitch material, and text-painting in the work allow for special opportunities to convey meaning to audiences in ways that do not rely on traditional tonal relationships. Accompanying the shift away from traditional tonal relationships, the development of the harp repertoire in chamber and solo settings during the 20th century also led to the development of many extended- techniques for this instrument. For the most part, these techniques have been described and given various notational symbols but not discussed in detail with regard to execution. Federico's Little Songs for Children itself requires several unique extended-techniques. Recommendations are given in this paper concerning how to achieve the extended-techniques in Crumb's work in a stylistically appropriate and effective manner.

It is not uncommon to read claims of music’s ability to affect our sense of time and its rate of passage. Indeed, such effects are often considered among the most distinctive and prized aspects of musical aesthetics. Yet when it comes to the similarly abstract notion of space and its manipulation by musical structures, theorists are generally silent. My dissertation addresses this gap in the literature and shows how music’s spatial effects arise through an affective engagement with musical works. In this study, I examine an eclectic selection of compositions to determine how the spaces we inhabit are transformed by the music we hear within them. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theory of embodied perception, as well as research on acoustics, sound studies, and media theory, I deploy an affective model of spatial perception—a model that links the sense of space with the moment-to-moment needs and desires of the perceiver— to explain how these musical modulations of space occur. My claim is that the manner in which the music solicits our engagement affects how we respond, which in turn affects what we perceive. I begin by discussing the development of recording technology and how fixed media works deemed “spatial music” reinforce a particular conception of space as an empty container in which sound sources are arrayed in specific locations relative to a fixed listening position. After showing how innovative studio techniques have been used to unsettle this conventional spatial configuration, I then discuss examples of Renaissance vocal music, instrumental chamber music, and 20th century electronic music in order to develop a richer understanding of the range of spatial interactions that musical textures and timbres can provide. In my final chapter, I draw upon these varieties of affective engagement to construct a hermeneutic analysis of the spatial experience afforded by Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, thereby modeling a phenomenological method for grounding interpretation in embodied, rather than strictly discursive, practices. By soliciting movement through the call for bodily action, music allows us an opportunity to fit together one world of possibilities with another, thereby providing an occasion for grasping new meanings presented through the work. The spatial aspect of music, therefore, does not consist in merely recognizing an environmental setting populated by individual sound sources. Through the embodied practices of music perception and the malleability of space they reveal, we are afforded an opportunity to reshape our understanding of the world around us.