Black Angels

Black Angels By

George Crumb

“Things were turned upside down. There were terrifying things in the air… they found their way into Black Angels.”

George Crumb 1990

So if you were hoping for a pleasant picture of a Debussy nocturne or a Mozart minuet, I am sorry that I have to disappoint. I have chosen ‘Black Angels’ by George Crumb for my first piece. It is an astounding piece and I urge you to listen to it.

Crumb wrote this piece for string quartet in 1971. It is subtitled “Thirteen Images from the Dark Land”. The players are expected to use lots of “extended” techniques where they play, hit, pluck, slide, scratch as well as sing, shout, speak text in different languages and also play some percussion instruments. The quartet instruments are instructed to be amplified and Crumb asks that the volume be turned up to the “threshold of pain”

This is a striking, emotional work that is both harrowing and beautiful. Crumb based it on the Vietnam war that was happening at the time and “electric insects” can be heard representing the US weapon of choice - the helicopter. He also commented that this piece portrays a voyage of the soul from departure and fall from grace to absence where the soul is annihilated to finally return and redemption.

Black Angels are of course fallen angels and nightmarish in their story and in this music they haunt and disturb in equal measure. This piece always moves me to tears. It is painful, harrowing and yet also beautiful: how we can see beauty in pain.

So I chose a particularly challenging first piece to do. I listened to it and wrote lots of word associations of what it felt to me. The words pain, cry, trapped, lost, alone, children, threads and fragility were particularly strong.

I then did some research on the piece itself and listen to three different recordings (I’ve spent a lot of time on this today). Then I got out a long thin prepared board to do the work on.

I began by doing a pencil drawing that I thought would be the basis for it. I did this while listening of course. There are faces, figures, cages, death and the maiden and the iconic image of the little girl running from a napalm attack.

Then I was thinking if I should focus on one small section, do I do a figure, do I make it specific, a narrative? Then I thought should I do many paintings of this. I could do a whole series of paintings on this music.

And I could - and may at some point! But I reigned myself back to my purpose and got another board and painted an emotional response to what I was hearing.

I see these black, red, white and golds in the music. I also needed to scratch and have a rhythmic mark making - as a string player myself my right hand with a palette knife is so similar to holding a bow where all the rhythm resides. I have always ‘seen’ those colours listening to this (I have been listening to this piece since my late teens).

I did also practice my double bass today and I was happy to discover that I feel like I was more engaged with the artistry of making notes sing rather than berating myself for the failings in my technique which I always vow to be working on. I hope that the interplay between my art and music will prove to benefit both.