Ancient Voices of Children - Form and Compositional Style

Form and Compositional Style

Ancient Voices of Children is composed of five movements of which all but two are setting of fragments of longer poems by García Lorca. Two purely instrumental dance-interludes – "Dances of the Ancient Earth" and "Ghost Dance" – appear between vocal movements.

The Little Boy was Looking for his Voice

  1. El niño busca su voz
    Dances of the Ancient Earth
  2. Me he perdido muchas veces por el mar
  3. ¿De dónde vienes, amor, mi niño? (Dance of the Sacred Life-Cycle)
  4. Todas las tardes en Granada, todas las tardes se muere un niño
    Ghost Dance
  5. Se ha llenado de luces mi corazón de seda

Highly virtuosic in style, Ancient Voices of Children is famous for its bizarre and often eerie vocal effects. Perhaps the most original of these is produced by the soprano singing a kind of fantastic vocalise (based on purely phonetic sounds) into an amplified piano. The singer's voice echoes as the piano strings reverberate sympathetically with the singer. In the last movement, a boy soprano joins the soprano. He briefly sings from off stage before coming on stage for the final vocalise. As with many of Crumb's compositions, Ancient Voices of Children includes a large number of experimental sounds and instruments. This includes prayer stones, Japanese temple bells, a musical saw, and a toy piano. All the performers are also asked to speak, whisper, or yell at times.

Of his inspiration for Ancient Voices of Children Crumb has provided the following insights:

"It is sometimes of interest to a composer to recall the original impulse – the 'creative germ' – of a compositional project. In the case of Ancient Voices I felt this impulse to be the climactic final words of the last song: '... and I will go very far ... to ask Christ the lord to give me back my ancient soul of a child.'"

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