George Crumb - Makrokosmos, Volume I (1972) - Nic Gerpe, Piano

Makrokosmos, Volume I - Twelve Fantasy Pieces after the Zodiac for Amplified Piano (1972) Composed by George Crumb Nic Gerpe, Piano Program Note: Makrokosmos, Volume I was composed in 1972 for my friend David Burge. Ten years previously, in 1962 (we were then colleagues at the University of Colorado), he had commissioned and premiered my Five Pieces for Piano. I was very much excited about the expanding possibilities of piano idiom – it seemed as if a whole new world were opening up to composers; and I was especially impressed by Burge’s immediate and total mastery of this new idiom, which implied an organic synthesis of conventional (keyboard) and unconventional (inside the piano) techniques. I wanted to do a sequel to the Five Pieces but, alas, several attempts proved abortive. One set of sketches was assimilated into my Songs, Drones, and Refrains of Death; other ideas wandered homelessly through the years; and two or three germinal ideas finally evolved into Makrokosmos. The title a