Oslo Philharmonic Chamber Series George Crumb
Franz Schubert

George Crumb: Black Angels

In the score of his string quartet, George Crumb (1929-2022) wrote: "in tempore belli", meaning "in times of war" in Latin. He composed the quartet in 1970 as a lament for the Vietnam War. The eerie insect tremolos at the opening of the work represent the attack helicopters used by the Americans during the war. He quotes other works in Black Angels, perhaps most strikingly the Andante from Schubert's Death and the Maiden.

Schubert: Death and the Maiden

Franz Peter Schubert (1797–1828) was only 20 years old when he set the poem "Der Tod und das Mädchen" (Death and the Maiden) by the poet Matthias Claudius (1740–1815) to music for voice and piano. The poem is written as a dialogue between a young woman and Death, and the Andante is the heart of the quartet. The maiden begs Death to leave her, as she is still young. The string quartet is consistently marked by sudden, dramatic shifts from soft to loud, from the lyrical to the violently dramatic. Despite the work's sombre subject matter, Schubert creates light in the darkness through beautiful and expressive melodies.