Scope and Content Note
The George Crumb Papers span the period 1956 to 2011, with the majority of the materials dating from 1965 to 2003. The collection consists of holograph manuscript scores and sketches, correspondence and business papers, and a series of meticulously assembled scrapbooks chronicling Crumb's distinguished career as a composer.
The music materials represent works composed exclusively from 1959 to the present day, beginning with Crumb's Variazioni, his dissertational submission to the University of Michigan. They include inked score paste-ups for publication, pencil scores and sketches, drafts, annotated photo-reproductions, and several score transparencies. Crumb's final copy scores are inked with extraordinary precision and reflect the influence of his father's skills as a copyist and Ross Lee Finney's pedagogy. Most contain extensive patches of inked-over whiteout and pasted insertions. Notable scores include the Pulitzer Prize-winning Echoes of Time and the River, Ancient Voices of Children, Black Angels, Five Pieces for Piano, A Haunted Landscape, Lux Aeterna, Madrigals, Makrokosmos, Mundis Canis, Star-Child, and Vox Balaenae. Additionally, the collection includes several sketchbooks with materials to numerous compositions, currently identified only as volumes "A" through "C". A more comprehensive list of their contents will be available at a later time.
Business papers consist chiefly of letters, telegrams, contracts, programs, and other documents from 1956 to 2011. Included is university and publisher correspondence, student inquiries, and letters from various colleagues and friends, such as David Burge. The scrapbooks comprise seven custom bound volumes of clippings, programs, photographs, interviews, posters, and other materials that detail Crumb's musical accomplishments from roughly 1963 to 2001. These are assembled with the same meticulous care as the composer's scores and include hundreds of performance reviews from both American and international newspapers.