Between Romanticism and Modernism and Postmodernism: George Crumb’s Black Angels

Abstract

This article discusses the use of tonal quotation/pastiche in George Crumb’s Black Angels (1970) in the context of an analysis of the entire work. I draw from Losada’s work on postmodernism and collage to understand the organization of the quotation/pastiche movements, and I draw from Bass’s work on Crumb to understand the non-tonal pitch structures in the quartet as a whole. But I suggest that the quartet—an unusual combination of palindromic design and goal-oriented, programmatic activity—also engages the paradigms of Erlösung (Darcy) and teleological genesis (Hepokoski), which suggest a link between Black Angels and the romantic symphonic tradition and which provide a context for understanding the role played by the quotation/pastiche movements in the work.