Black Angels
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Category: Music CD
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Music CD Cover
Edition: Music CDCD Release Date: 1990-06-21
Music Label: Nonesuch
Soundtracks:
- Black Angels: I. Departure
- Black Angels: II. Absence
- Black Angels: III. Return
- Spem In Alium (Sing And Glorify)
- Doom. A Sigh
- They Are There!
- Quartet No. 8: I. Largo
- Quartet No. 8: II. Allegro Molto
- Quartet No. 8: III. Allegretto
- Quartet No. 8: IV. Largo
- Quartet No. 8: V. Largo
Free Music Notes for Black Angels
Free Music Review: Something to Be Said...
Hit: 3 Stars
I haven't written a review for a product in an extremely long time here, but I felt that I needed to say something on this album.
I was looking for pieces of George Crumb to listen to and stumbled upon "Black Angels." I did not expect to hear what I did. First of all, I must say that the quartet is extremely talented in all matters; their renditions of the work of Crumb and Shostakovich are supremely beautiful (my favorites: "Allegro Molto" and "Allegretto" by Shostakovich.) The pieces from Crumb--"Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark Land"--could not be more appropiately titled. It is at times gorgeous and yet terrifying, shocking and yet absorbing--but always haunting. (By the way, in case you did not know, Crumb's "Therenody I: Night of the Electric Insects", the first of all pieces heard on the album was used in some dramatic moments in "The Exorcist.")
Moving on, "Spem in Alium," was actually a pleasant surprise to me; I did indeed feel like I had been transported back to Elizabeth I's court, and while it lasts almost nine minutes, I believe this is something you can relax to (though I almost could smell incense burning in the background...) To make a long story short, I cannot get into "They Are There!", though this is just more testimony to the diversity of the projects that the group tackled on this album. But frankly, it is "Doom. A Sigh" that has troubled me the most. The Apocalyptic-like background effects coupled with the 1952 poorly-recorded crying and chanting of a woman in archaic Hungarian may be the most frightening piece of "music" I have yet heard. I will also admit that I did not make it through the 11 minute running time of it, however you may want to give it a try...
Black Angels Poster
The title to Kronos's most bleak album comes from a nearly 20- minute-long composition by American composer George Crumb that unfolds over 13 distinct parts. That ominous number only hints at the horror Crumb intended as an ode to the Vietnam War. War informs the whole CD: Shostakovich's Quartet No. 8, composed near the height of the Cold War, in 1960, was dedicated "to the victims of fascism and war." "Doom. A Sigh," by Istvan Marta, incorporates field recordings of two Romanian women singing personal laments of fallen friends and relatives; their grief is so intense as to render listening incredibly difficult. The original text to 16th-century composer Thomas Tallis's "Spem in Alium" (originally a 40-voice motet) recalled a biblical battle. And late American composer Charles Ives is heard singing (yes, singing) "They Are There!"--a ditty he wrote during the Great War and revisited for World War II; he's joined here by the Kronos, half a century after his death, in an act of studio magic that is ingenious if not musically stimulating. --Marc WeidenbaumClassical Music CDs
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