The works of Gustav Mahler have exerted a profound influence on those of George Crumb, especially in the latter's settings of Federico Garcia Lorca's poetry. These influences include formal and tonal designs, instrumentation, notation, poetic imagery, motivic structure, and theatrical effects. Self-quotation is also present in Crumb's music, as in the finger-cymbal crashes in Echoes of Time and the River and Night Music I. Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde has also been a fertile source for Crumb, as his Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death borrows from it heavily. The use of a guitar and mandolin in Mahler's Symphony No. 7 is echoed in Crumb's Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death, Eleven Echoes of Autumn, 1965, and Makrokosmos I. An oboe figure from the Mahler is obviously evoked in Ancient Voices of Children.

Works: Crumb: Night Music I (9-14, 16-17, 22), Echoes of Time and the River (9, 14, 20), Ancient Voices of Children (10, 24-33), Eleven Echoes of Autumn, 1965 (12-15, 20, 24, 33), Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death (14-15, 17-20, 26), Makrokosmos I (15-17), Night of the Four Moons (21-24, 33), Five Pieces for Piano (36).

Sources: Bartok: Out of Doors (11); Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (10, 15, 17, 33, 35-6), Das Lied von der Erde (12, 15, 17, 20-33), Symphony No. 6 (17, 33), Symphony No. 5 (20), Das Klagende Lied (20), Symphony No. 9 (21); Haydn: Symphony No. 45, Farewell (21-22); Mahler: Symphony No. 3 (29), Symphony No. 4 (29).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Marc Geelhoed