{"title":"George Crumb's Black Angels and the Vietnam War","authors":"Abigail Shupe","doi":"10.1080/07494467.2022.2033571","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In this essay, I analyze how Crumb's Black Angels relates to the Vietnam War. I trace a history of this association through reviews of the piece's performances and shows that reviewers began connecting it with Vietnam after the American withdrawal and the end of the war in 1975. Through a comparison with Tim O’Brien's The Things They Carried ([1990] 1998. New York: Broadway Books), the analysis shows that listeners thematically connect aspects of Black Angels with the Vietnam War. Themes of blurriness, and unreliable narrator, trauma, and morality connect the texts. Using Lochhead's concept of musical things, and O’Brien's notions of happening-truth vs. story-truth, the analysis relates issues of musical structure to the novel to show how the piece conveys presence related to the Vietnam War.","PeriodicalId":44746,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Music Review","volume":"41 1","pages":"55 - 73"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Contemporary Music Review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2022.2033571","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"MUSIC","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In this essay, I analyze how Crumb's Black Angels relates to the Vietnam War. I trace a history of this association through reviews of the piece's performances and shows that reviewers began connecting it with Vietnam after the American withdrawal and the end of the war in 1975. Through a comparison with Tim O’Brien's The Things They Carried ([1990] 1998. New York: Broadway Books), the analysis shows that listeners thematically connect aspects of Black Angels with the Vietnam War. Themes of blurriness, and unreliable narrator, trauma, and morality connect the texts. Using Lochhead's concept of musical things, and O’Brien's notions of happening-truth vs. story-truth, the analysis relates issues of musical structure to the novel to show how the piece conveys presence related to the Vietnam War.
期刊介绍:
Contemporary Music Review provides a forum for musicians and musicologists to discuss recent musical currents in both breadth and depth. The main concern of the journal is the critical study of music today in all its aspects—its techniques of performance and composition, texts and contexts, aesthetics, technologies, and relationships with other disciplines and currents of thought. The journal may also serve as a vehicle to communicate documentary materials, interviews, and other items of interest to contemporary music scholars. All articles are subjected to rigorous peer review before publication. Proposals for themed issues are welcomed.