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      Hear Lata Mangeshkar in These Four Streaming Films

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      Because Mangeshkar lent her voice to several generations of Bollywood stars, these movies double as a highlight reel for Hindi cinema.They called her the Queen of Melody.Lata Mangeshkar, the Bollywood singer who died on Sunday at 92, left behind a monumental body of work in a career that began in 1942, when she was just 13. Her singing for films, which continued until 2015, spanned numerous regional-language industries, but she defined mainstream Hindi cinema in a way few artists have. (Another artist who did, Mangeshkar’s sister Asha Bhosle, is also a playback singer.)Mangeshkar lent her angelic voice, with its four-octave range, to several generations of stars, from Madhubala in the horror classic “Mahal” (1949) and the historical epic “Mughal-e-Azam” (1960) to Hema Malini in the crime comedy “Dream Girl” (1977) to Madhuri Dixit and Karisma Kapoor in the romantic drama “Dil To Pagal Hai” (1997). In “Dil To Pagal Hai,” her recognizable voice emanates from both actresses, sometimes in the same scene, but this double duty isn’t distracting. With thousands of songs to her name, she was as common to Indian audiences as close-ups and scene transitions, accepted as a crucial element of cinematic language.Four of her most successful films are available to stream. Given the breadth of her career, they effectively double as a highlight reel for the history of Hindi cinema. An introduction to its riches would be nearly impossible without her.‘Awaara’ (1951)Stream it on MUBI; buy or rent it on Amazon Prime.Raj Kapoor’s “Awaara” straddles the line between art house and blockbuster. It was both a Grand Prix nominee at the Cannes Film Festival and an enormous financial success, a huge hit not only in India, but also in China and the Soviet Union.A false-imprisonment story with social reform on its mind, “Awaara” cemented Hindi cinema’s lasting theme of romance across economic lines, told here through Kapoor’s trenchant mix of gritty melodrama and lavish musical scenes. Mangeshkar, who provides the singing voice for the actress Nargis, captures the giddy excitement of new love in “Jab Se Balam Ghar Aaye” (“Ever Since My Beloved Returned”), which she deepens into intoxicating passion in “Dam Bhar Jo Udhar Munh Phere” (“If You Turn Away for a Moment”), an intimate duet with the renowned singer Mukesh.Mangeshkar’s vocals are just as suited to the story’s dreamlike turn in “Ghar Aaya Mera Pardesi” (“My Stranger Came Home”), in which she projects an operatic longing. The film runs the stylistic gamut, and her dynamic voice aids in its transformations.‘Sholay’ (1975)Buy or rent it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play and YouTube.Ramesh Sippy’s musical “western” “Sholay” had a fabled theatrical run of nearly six years. Its box office success is partially owed to its musical set pieces composed by R.D. Burman.“Holi Ke Din” (“On the Day of Holi”), a colorful explosion set during the Hindu spring festival, is both a celebratory respite between violent action scenes and a romantic tête-à-tête between the roguish Veeru (Dharmendra), whose singing is voiced by Kishore Kumar, and the feisty Basanti (Hema Malini), voiced by Mangeshkar. Basanti struck a chord with audiences not only for her fast-talking bravado, but also for a memorable act of sacrifice: To save Veeru from a callous bandit, she agrees, in an act of heroism distinct to the Indian musical, to dance on broken glass in “Haa Jab Tak Hai Jaan” (“As Long As I Live”), which Mangeshkar sings lovingly and fearlessly.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      Review: Without a Note of Beethoven, an Orchestra Shines

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      At Carnegie Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra gave pride of place to a once-forgotten Florence Price symphony, alongside new works and a classic.The vast majority of the music the Philadelphia Orchestra is playing in its eight concerts at Carnegie Hall this season is by Beethoven.Under its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, this ensemble plays the master with warmth and verve. And alongside the nine classic symphonies, it is presenting contemporary works written in response, a tried-and-true technique to scooch in the new with the old, spoonful-of-sugar style. They’ve been worthy performances.But even though three of the concerts are yet to come — Beethoven’s First and Ninth on Feb. 21, then his “Missa Solemnis” and a John Williams gala in April — I reckon that nothing the Philadelphians do at Carnegie this season will be more impressive than Tuesday’s performance.There was not a note of Beethoven. Nor, for that matter, any piece that could be considered a standard audience draw. The closest thing to a chestnut, Samuel Barber’s 1947 soprano monologue “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” bloomed in the fresh company of two new works and Florence Price’s once-forgotten Symphony No. 1.When the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered the Price in 1933, it was the first work by a Black woman to be played by a major orchestra. While women and composers of color are now better represented on programs, it is still all too rare for them (or for anything but a canonical piece) to have the anchor position at a concert’s end.So it was a progressive, even inspiring statement for Philadelphia — which released a recording of Price’s First and Third symphonies last year — to close with the First. And the players gave it the same vitality and subtlety they’ve brought to Beethoven.The opening bassoon line was here less a solo showpiece than a mellow song nestled modestly within the textures of the strings. In that bassoon call — along with the blending of folk-style melodies and classical sweep, and a dancing finale — Price’s symphony bears the unmistakable influence of Dvorak’s “New World.” But it is very much its own piece, with an arresting vacillation between raging force and abrupt lyrical oases in the first movement and a wind whistle echoing through the vibrant Juba dance in the third.Price clearly knew she had a good tune in the slow second movement, a hymnlike refrain for brass chorale that she milks for all it’s worth. But the many repetitions, with delicate African drumming underneath, take on the shining dignity of prayer. And the ending, with rapid calligraphy in the winds winding around the theme, rises to ecstasy, punctuated by bells.Sounding lush yet focused and committed, Nézet-Séguin’s orchestra even highlights a quality I hadn’t particularly associated with Price: humor, in her dances and in the way a clarinet suddenly squiggles out of that slow hymn, like a giggle in church.The concert opened with a new suite by Matthew Aucoin adapted from his opera “Eurydice,” which played at the Metropolitan Opera last fall. At the Met, Aucoin’s score swamped a winsome story, but in an 18-minute instrumental digest, it was easier to appreciate his music’s dense, raucous extravagance, the way he whips an orchestra from mists into oceans, then makes pummeling percussion chase it into a gallop. Ricardo Morales, the Philadelphians’ principal clarinet, played his doleful solo with airily glowing tone, a letter from another world.There was grandeur, too, in Valerie Coleman’s “This Is Not a Small Voice,” her new setting of a poetic paean to Black pride by Sonia Sanchez that weaves from rumination to bold declaration. The soprano Angel Blue was keen, her tone as rich yet light as whipped cream, in a difficult solo part, which demands crisp speak-singing articulation and delves into velvety depths before soaring upward to glistening high notes. Blue was also superb — sweet and gentle, but always lively — in the nostalgic Barber.In its inspired alignment of old and new, the concert recalled last week’s program at the New York Philharmonic, which also closed with a rediscovered symphony by a Black composer. When it comes to broadening the sounds that echo through our opera houses and concert halls, change can be frustratingly slow. But to hear, within a few days, two of the country’s most venerable orchestras play symphonies by Julius Eastman and Florence Price did give the sense of watching the tectonic plates of the repertory shift in real time.Philadelphia OrchestraAppears next at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan, on Feb. 21. More

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      John Williams, Hollywood’s Maestro, Looks Beyond the Movies

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      The composer of “Star Wars” and “Jaws,” who turned 90 this week, says he will soon step away from film. But he has no intention of slowing down.UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — At the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, when film production came to a halt and recording studios shuttered, John Williams, the storied Hollywood composer and conductor, found himself, for the first time in his nearly seven-decade career, without a movie to worry about.This, in Williams’s highly ritualized world — mornings spent studying film reels and improvising at his Steinway; a turkey sandwich and glass of Perrier at 1 p.m.; afternoons devoted to revisions — was initially disorienting.But in the months that followed, Williams came to relish his freedom. He had time to compose a violin concerto, immerse himself in scores by Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, and go for long walks on a golf course near his home in Los Angeles.“I welcomed it,” Williams said in a recent interview. “It was an escape.”Now the film industry is back in action, and Williams, who turned 90 on Tuesday, is once again at the piano churning out earworms — pencil, paper and stopwatch in hand.Even as he plans to slow down his film scoring, Williams is focused on conducting and composing concert music for collaborators like Yo-Yo Ma.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesBut Williams, whose music permeates popular culture to a degree unsurpassed by any other contemporary composer, is at a crossroads. Tired of the constraints of film — the deadlines, the need for brevity, the competition with ever-blaring sound effects, the work eating up half a year — he says he will soon step away from movie projects.“I don’t particularly want to do films anymore,” he said. “Six months of life at my age is a long time.”In his next phase, he plans to focus more intensely on another passion: writing concert works, of which he has already produced several dozen. He has visions of another piece for a longtime collaborator, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and he is planning his first proper piano concerto.“I’m much happier, as I have been during this Covid time, working with an artist and making the music the best you can possibly make it in your hands,” he said.Yet the legacy of his more than 100 film scores — the “Star Wars,” “Jaws” and “Harry Potter” franchises among them — looms large, to say nothing of his fanfares, themes and celebratory anthems for the likes of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “Sunday Night Football,” the Olympics and the Statue of Liberty’s centennial.The Music of John WilliamsThe composer of “Star Wars” and “Jaws” has been a fixture in the film industry for half a century.Beyond the Movies: The 90-year-old Hollywood maestro will soon step away from film to focus on another passion: writing concert works.In the Concert Hall: Williams’s symphonic pieces tend to be skillful but less imaginative than his film scores. Here are five examples.A Source of Inspiration: “Star Wars” is rooted in the classics, and so is Williams’s music for the soundtracks. Listen to these comparisons.“He has written the soundtrack of our lives,” said the conductor Gustavo Dudamel, a friend. “When we listen to a melody of John’s, we go back to a time, to a taste, to a smell. All our senses go back to a moment.”Williams’s music harkens back to an era of Hollywood blockbusters, when crowds gathered at theaters to be transported. He has excelled at creating shared experiences: instilling in every member of an audience the same terror about a menacing shark, conjuring a common exhilaration in watching spaceships take flight.The pandemic has robbed Hollywood of some of that magic. But Williams’s admirers say his music, with its appeal across cultures and generations, is an antidote to the isolation of the moment.“We need him more now than we’ve ever needed him before,” said Hans Zimmer, another storied film composer.Leatherbound scores for a small sampling of the many films Williams has worked on, including the “Harry Potter” series and “War of the Worlds.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesWilliams — a fixture in the industry since the 1950s, with 52 Academy Award nominations, second only to Walt Disney, and five Oscars — recognizes that he might be the last of a certain type of Hollywood composer. Grandiose, complex orchestral scores, rooted in European Romanticism, are increasingly rare. At many film studios, synthesized music is the rage.“I feel like I’m sort of sitting on an edge of something,” he said, “and change is happening.”Born in New York, Williams became interested in composing as a teenager, entranced by the orchestral scores and books brought home by his father, a jazz percussionist.After stints as a studio pianist in Hollywood in his 20s, he found work as a film and television composer, making his feature film debut at 26, in 1958, with “Daddy-O,” a comedy about street racing.In the 1970s, Williams’s work caught the attention of Steven Spielberg, then an aspiring filmmaker searching for someone who could write like a previous generation of Hollywood composers: Max Steiner, Dimitri Tiomkin, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Bernard Herrmann.“He knew how to write a tune, and he knew how to support that tune with compelling and complex arrangements,” Spielberg recalled in an interview. “I hadn’t heard anything of the likes since the old greats.”The two began a partnership that has spanned a half century and more than two dozen films, including “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Schindler’s List” and “Jaws,” for which Williams’s two-note ostinato became a cultural phenomenon.“When everyone came out and said ‘Jaws’ scared them out of the water, it was Johnny who scared them out of the water,” Spielberg said. “His music was scarier than seeing the shark.”Williams pointing to a sketch of a Tyrannosaurus rex chase scene from “Jurassic Park.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesIn 1974, when he was 42, Williams suffered what he called “the tragedy of my life” when his first wife, the actress Barbara Ruick, died suddenly.“It taught me who I was and the meaning of my work,” he said, but added that the next several years were difficult, and he struggled as a single parent of three children with a busy career. “Star Wars,” which premiered in 1977, brought a new level of fame and marked the beginning of a four-decade-long project that has encompassed nine films, dozens of musical motifs and more than 20 hours of music.George Lucas, the creator of “Star Wars,” said Williams was the “secret sauce” of the franchise. While the two sometimes disagreed, he said Williams did not hesitate to try out new material, including when Lucas initially rejected his scoring of a well-known scene in which Luke Skywalker gazes at a desert sunset.“You normally have, with a composer, giant egos, and wanting to argue about everything, and ‘I want it to be my score, not your score,’” Lucas said. “None of that existed with John.”Williams’s career as a conductor also took off. In 1980, he was chosen to succeed Arthur Fiedler as the leader of the Boston Pops. Over the next 13 years in the position, he worked to promote film music as art, and forged friendships with leading classical artists.In 1993, when he was working on “Schindler’s List,” he called the renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman. “I hear a violin,” he said, according to Perlman. To this day, Perlman added, the aching theme from that film remains the only piece that audiences specifically request to hear at his concerts.Perlman said Williams had a talent for conveying the essence of disparate cultures: evoking Jewish identity in “Schindler’s List,” for example, or Japanese traditions in “Memoirs of a Geisha.”“His music has a fingerprint,” he said. “When you hear it, you know it’s John.”Williams’s bookshelves at home, with a bust of Aaron Copland and a copy of Cole Porter’s lyrics. “I hadn’t heard anything of the likes since the old greats,” Steven Spielberg says.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesWilliams’s concert works, more abstract than much of his film music, have been less widely embraced. But Ma, for whom Williams has written several pieces, said curiosity and humanity anchored his works. In 2001, moments before Ma was to begin a recording session of “Elegy,” a piece for cello and orchestra, he recalled that Williams told him he had written the music in honor of two children who had been murdered.“I think of him as a total musician, someone who has experienced everything,” Ma said. “He knows all the ways that music can be made.”Inside his studio on the back lot of Universal Studios Hollywood, Williams is surrounded by mementos: a miniature bust of Beethoven, vintage movie posters chosen by Spielberg and, on a coffee table, a yellow bumper sticker reading, “Just Say No.” A model of a dinosaur, a nod to “Jurassic Park,” watches over the piano.At 90, he is astute and energetic but soft-spoken, looking much the same as he has the past two decades: black turtleneck, faint eyebrows and a wispy white beard.This year, he will complete what he expects to be his final two films: “The Fabelmans,” loosely based on Spielberg’s childhood, and a fifth installment in the “Indiana Jones” series.“The Fabelmans” has been particularly emotional, he said, given its importance to Spielberg. On a recent day, he recounted, the director wept as Williams played through several scenes on the piano.Williams said that he expected “The Fabelmans” would be the pair’s final film collaboration, though he added that it was hard to say no to Spielberg, whom he considers a brother. (Spielberg, for his part, said that Williams had promised to continue scoring his films indefinitely. “I feel pretty secure,” he said.)“Music has been my oxygen,” Williams says, “and has kept me alive and interested and occupied and gratified.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesAt the end of his film career, Williams is making time to pursue some longtime dreams, including conducting in Europe. His works were once considered too commercial for some of the great concert halls. But when he made his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic in 2020, players asked for photos and autographs.The violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter said she was disappointed that there had been skepticism about his music.“Everything he writes is art,” said Mutter, for whom Williams wrote his second violin concerto, which premiered last year. “His music, in its diversity, has greatly contributed to the survival of so-called classical music.”And his peers say he has helped establish, beyond doubt, the legitimacy of film music. Zimmer, who wrote the music for “Dune,” said he is “the greatest composer America has had, end of story.” Danny Elfman, another film composer, called him “the godfather, the master.” Dudamel drew comparisons to Beethoven.Williams is more modest, describing himself as a carpenter. “I don’t know if it’s a passion,” he said of composing, “as much as an almost physiological necessity.”He said he still gets a thrill when people tell him that his music has been formative in their lives: He was delighted several years ago when Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, said he had insisted on playing “Star Wars” at his bar mitzvah, over his parents’ objections.Williams said he tries not to fixate on age, even as hundreds of ensembles around the world — in Japan, Australia, Italy and elsewhere — host concerts to mark his birthday. And he said he does not fear death; he sees life as a dream, at the end of which we awaken.“Music has been my oxygen,” he said, “and has kept me alive and interested and occupied and gratified.”Williams recalled a recent pilgrimage to St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany, where Bach once worked as a cantor. He listened intently as a pastor described the efforts to protect the great composer’s remains during World War II; he marveled at the dedication to preserving Bach’s legacy.On his way out of the church, he paused. An organist was filling the grand space with the hymn-like theme from “Jurassic Park.”Williams, beaming, turned to the pastor.“Now,” he said, “I can die.” More

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      With Little New Competition, ‘Encanto’ Is No. 1 a Fourth Time

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      The soundtrack to Disney’s latest animated film holds at the top of Billboard’s album chart in its 10th week out.Disney’s “Encanto” soundtrack, with songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, tops the Billboard album chart for a fourth time this week, with no major new releases to challenge it.The “Encanto” soundtrack, which has been out since November, had the equivalent of 113,000 sales in the United States in its 10th week on the chart, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. That total — down only 2 percent from the previous week — included nearly 140 million streams and 16,000 copies sold as a complete package.Last week, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” the film’s breakout hit, reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart, displacing Adele’s “Easy on Me” after its 10th week at the top.The last soundtrack album to notch four weeks at No. 1 was “A Star Is Born,” by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, in late 2018 and early 2019.Also this week, the Weeknd’s “Dawn FM” rises two spots to No. 2 in its fourth week out, after the album was released on CD. Gunna’s “DS4Ever” is No. 3, Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 4 and YoungBoy Never Broke Again’s “Colors” fell three spots to No. 5 in its second week out. More

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      Spotify Stands by Joe Rogan: ‘Canceling Voices Is a Slippery Slope’

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      Spotify is not canceling Joe Rogan.Two weeks into an evolving and far-reaching controversy over its star podcaster, who has been accused of spreading misinformation about the coronavirus, and condemned for his past use of a racial slur, Spotify has faced growing pressure to take a stronger stance about the podcasts it hosts.But in a memo to employees over the weekend, Daniel Ek, the company’s chief executive, discussed the recent removal of a number of episodes and made it clear that it would not drop Rogan’s show, “The Joe Rogan Experience.” That show has been exclusive to Spotify since 2020, when the company made a licensing deal with Rogan that has been reported to be worth $100 million or more.“I do not believe that silencing Joe is the answer,” Ek wrote in the memo, which Spotify provided to The New York Times. “We should have clear lines around content and take action when they are crossed, but canceling voices is a slippery slope.”Ek also confirmed that Spotify recently removed dozens of episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” after a compilation video was shared online by the singer India.Arie showing Rogan repeatedly using a racial slur on his show. In a video over the weekend, Rogan apologized and called it “the most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly,” though he also said that at the times he made those comments — over 12 years of his podcast, Rogan said — he had believed that they were acceptable in context. Many commentators found that apology insufficient.In his memo, Ek said that Rogan made the decision to remove the episodes, which appear to number about 70, after meetings with Spotify executives and after “his own reflections.”Ek also said that Spotify would invest $100 million for the “licensing, development and marketing” of music and other forms of audio “from historically marginalized groups.” What that would entail was not immediately clear. Spotify licenses most of its music from record labels and music distributors, and music from Black artists and other minorities are among the most popular on the platform; Spotify has also promoted minority podcasters with its “Sound Up” program, for example. Representatives of the company did not respond to a request for clarification.Since Jan. 24, when Neil Young demanded that his music be removed from Spotify, citing complaints from health professionals about Covid-19 misinformation on Rogan’s show, the company has faced a mini boycott from musicians, and constant criticism online. Joni Mitchell, Arie and Young’s sometime bandmates in Crosby, Stills and Nash, have all pulled their music. A handful of other artists, like the alternative band Failure, have followed suit, while others have staged protests of various kinds. The band Belly, for example, added a “Delete Spotify” banner to its own Spotify profile page, and explained on social media that for many artists, removing their music from the service is easier said than done.In media circles, Spotify’s stance over Rogan has also raised questions about the responsibility of online companies to police the content on their platforms. In recent years, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others have come under frequent attack for the content they host, usually about politics or the pandemic. They have responded with a variety of measures, but tended to avoid labeling themselves as publishers.That stance has been more difficult for Spotify, given its exclusive deal with Rogan. In his memo, Ek doubled down on recent comments denying that Spotify is Rogan’s publisher. In a company town hall last week, he told employees that despite its exclusive arrangement with Rogan, Spotify did not have advance approval of his shows, and could remove his episodes only if they ran afoul of Spotify’s content guidelines. (Spotify released those platform rules for the first time last week; it was not clear whether the episodes that were removed last week violated them.)In his letter, Ek alluded to growing employee discontent about that position, and said he was “wrestling with how this perception squares with our values.”“I also want to be transparent,” he added, “in setting the expectation that in order to achieve our goal of becoming the global audio platform, these kinds of disputes will be inevitable.” More

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      George Crumb, Eclectic Composer Who Searched for Sounds, Dies at 92

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      Mr. Crumb wrote startling works, sometimes with political themes, and challenged musicians to employ new techniques, vocalize and move about the stage.George Crumb, a composer who filled his works with a magpie array of instrumental and human sounds and drew on the traditions of Asia and his native Appalachia to create music of startling effect, died on Sunday at his home in Media, Pa. He was 92.His death was announced by Bridge Records, his record label.While rejecting the sometimes arid 12-tone technique of Modernists, Mr. Crumb beguiled audiences with his own musical language, composing colorful and concise works that range in mood from peaceful to nightmarish. Mr. Crumb looking over one of his compositions in 2019.  “I love sounds that seem to hang in the air, and you can’t tell exactly where they’re coming from,” he once said. Jessica Kourkounis for The New York TimesHe continued to compose late in life. His 90th birthday was celebrated by organizations including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, which presented the premiere of a new piece for percussion quintet. “The apocalypse itself seemed to be evoked in the new Kronos-Kryptos piece, whose third movement has four bass drums going full tilt at the same time,” the critic David Patrick Stearns wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer.“Black Angels” (1970), one of Mr. Crumb’s best-known works and a reaction to the Vietnam War, was an early example of his imaginative eclecticism. It is scored for an amplified string quartet and features techniques such as tapping the strings with thimbles. A mournful fragment from Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” string quartet is interrupted by fierce bow strokes and human shouts.The grimly claustrophobic music of the first movement, “Threnody I: Night of the Electric Insects,” was deemed sufficiently scary to be used on the soundtrack for the horror film “The Exorcist.”Mr. Crumb described the piece as “a kind of parable on our troubled contemporary world.”The members of the Stanley Quartet, which premiered the work in 1970, were baffled by some of the unusual requirements and not necessarily happy to play them. Nevertheless, they went along.In 2014 Mr. Crumb, who guided their first performance, said: “They hadn’t played much contemporary music, so they were willing to do anything I wanted. And I ended up conducting, can you imagine? I felt like a fool conducting a string quartet, but it helped them keep it all together.”The piece has since entered the repertory and been championed by prominent ensembles like the Kronos Quartet.Other pieces were equally theatrical and sometimes featured ritualistic elements. A recording of whale songs made by a marine scientist inspired his “Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale)” for electric flute, cello and amplified piano (1971). The performers wear black half-masks; Mr. Crumb also specified that (where possible) the performance take place under blue lighting. He used various extended techniques, like strumming the piano strings with a paper clip, to create eerie sonorities.Each movement of his orchestral piece “Echoes of Time and the River” (awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1968) features processionals in which small groups of musicians move around the stage in patterns and directions specified in the score — requirements Mr. Crumb later acknowledged were rather impractical.Practicality usually wasn’t one of his primary concerns, however. As in Charles Ives’s massive Symphony No. 4, multiple conductors preside over Mr. Crumb’s “Star-Child” (1977), a major work set to Latin texts for soprano, solo trombone, children’s choir and large orchestra. A recording of the work, one of his few forays into orchestral repertory, won a Grammy in 2001.Mr. Crumb’s fascination with Federico García Lorca led to other major works. Lorca’s poetry “somehow reconciled the joyous and the tragic,” the composer said, and he set Lorca’s verse to music in four books of madrigals for soprano and various instruments in the 1960s, and later in several song cycles including “Ancient Voices of Children” (1970).Given its premiere by the mezzo soprano Jan DeGaetani, Mr. Crumb’s frequent collaborator and muse, “Ancient Voices” features a range of haunting vocal effects, sinewy oboe lines and spare sounds coaxed from Japanese temple bells, Tibetan prayer stones, mandolin, harp and toy piano.He was less prolific in the 1980s and 1990s, when he suffered a creative block, but found renewed energy after 2000. He created a series of American Songbooks, collections of arrangements of hymns, popular tunes and African American spirituals. The gentle melody of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” for example, is punctuated by uneasy percussive interjections and an array of shimmering sonorities.Mr. Crumb’s repertory for piano includes four books called “Makrokosmos,” the title inspired by Bartok’s “Mikrokosmos,” an influential series of student works of varying difficulty. The pianist is instructed to sing, shout and moan at various points in the series by Mr. Crumb.He wrote many of his works in an elaborately creative and nontraditional format. The score of “Makrokosmos II” (1973), for example, is notated in the shape of a peace sign.Mr. Crumb eschewed computer notation and even drew his own staves. The flutist Tara Helen O’Connor described Crumb’s idiosyncratic scores as “his way of expressing how the music flows through space,” adding that it “also leaves some of the magic and creativity up to the performer.”Detractors sometimes called him New Age-y or beholden to sound effects.The New York Times critic John Rockwell found fault with Mr. Crumb for at times failing to put his borrowings from other composers into a natural-sounding context, or to integrate them into his own style, or for not expressing more clearly his higher meanings.“What makes all this so frustrating is the sheer beauty and originality of so much of Mr. Crumb’s music,” he wrote in a 1983 review. “Hearing it is like trying to bask outdoors on a partially cloudy day: the sun feels wonderful when it breaks through, but it is too often obscured.”One of Mr. Crumb’s works was inspired by a recording of whale songs. The performers wore black half-masks, and he specified that (where possible) the performance take place under blue lighting.Oscar White/Corbis/VCG via Getty ImagesGeorge Henry Crumb Jr. was born on Oct. 24, 1929, in Charleston, W.Va., to George Henry Crumb, a clarinetist, and Vivian (Reed) Crumb, a cellist. Both were professional musicians who played in a local orchestra; his father taught him the clarinet.Like Ives, Mr. Crumb, who began composing around age 10, was exposed to eclectic musical styles growing up, including gospel, country, folk and pop. He was also fascinated by the sounds of the forest near his home. “I love sounds that seem to hang in the air, and you can’t tell exactly where they’re coming from,” he told The London Telegraph in 2009.He received his bachelor’s degree in 1950 from the Mason College of Music in Charleston and a master’s degree two years later from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Mr. Crumb received his doctorate in composition in 1959 from the University of Michigan, where he studied with the composer Ross Lee Finney. Mr. Crumb’s student works reflected his burgeoning interests in combining unusual sounds: he meshed Appalachian folk songs and instruments like the harmonica and musical saw with Asian influences. Mahler, Bartok and Debussy — whose use of color and timbre fascinated Mr. Crumb — were other important compositional influences.Mr. Crumb, a prominent teacher whose students included Christopher Rouse, Osvaldo Golijov and Jennifer Higdon, all successful composers, taught early in his career at the University of Colorado and at the University of Pennsylvania from 1965 to 1995. His works have been performed alongside those of his son David Crumb, a composer who teaches at the University of Oregon.Besides his son David, Mr. Crumb is survived by his wife, Elizabeth May (Brown) Crumb, a violinist; another son, Peter; and a sister, Ruth Crumb. His daughter, the actress and singer Ann Crumb, died of cancer in 2019.When asked in 1988 if he liked his own music, Mr. Crumb responded: “I think most composers like their own music. But I’m aware at the same time that in my opinion I haven’t fully realized a piece. In other words, I haven’t yet written the kind of music I would like to write in my heart of hearts. I sense that maybe that’s the human condition; maybe one never does, in fact.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      A Music Museum Opens in the Heart of Hungary’s Culture Wars

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      At City Park in Budapest, a building project has come to exemplify the politics of Viktor Orban, the country’s far-right prime minister.BUDAPEST — A polarizing project by the government of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s far-right prime minister, to transform the historic City Park here into a museum district has produced its first building: the House of Music, Hungary.Designed by the Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, the cultural center, which opened on Jan. 23, offers exhibitions, education and concerts. An interactive permanent show guides visitors through the historical development of Western music; celebrates the contribution of Hungarian composers like Liszt, Bartok and Kodaly; and traces Hungary’s folk music tradition to its Central Asian roots. One room, painted in the colors of the Hungarian flag, features video displays on the country’s political history and famous athletes, with the national anthem as a soundtrack.Yet beyond the House of Music’s glass walls, which are animated by reflections of construction elsewhere in the park, this new building is mired in controversy.Critics have said that the government’s plans to develop the 200-year-old City Park into a museum district disturbs the natural environment, deprives locals of much-needed public space and raises concerns about corruption. But those behind the project say the site has always been more than a public park, and that the undertaking is Europe’s largest urban development project. In a speech, Orban described the transformation as an “unfinished work of art.”The House of Music is the first of several planned buildings that will transform the 200-year-old City Park into a museum district.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesFujimoto was chosen as the House of Music’s architect in an international competition.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesVisitors in the House of Music’s “sound dome,” a 360-degree film and music experience.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesIn 2012, Orban’s government announced an ambitious plan to transform the park, in disrepair after decades of neglect, into a district of five museums. The estimated cost at the time was about $250 million, but that had ballooned to nearly five times original projections by 2017.There had been a virtual consensus that the park needed work, but the government and park conservationists disagreed about the fate of the park’s natural features.A special legal designation allowed the project to skirt existing development rules, meaning the municipality of Budapest had little say over the government’s plans. And legislation adopted by Orban’s party placed the park under the purview of a newly created, state-owned company controlled by his allies. Sandor Lederer of K-Monitor, an anti-corruption watchdog, said that public records indicate the House of Music alone had cost Hungarian taxpayers as much as $100 million.“The project is a good example of how public investments work under Orban,” Lederer said. “There are no real needs and impact assessments done; citizens and affected parties are excluded from consultations and planning.”He added that poor planning and corruption have benefited companies widely seen as Orban’s clientele, saying, “Not only present, but also future generations will pay the costs of another Orban pet project.”Laszlo Baan, the government commissioner overseeing the project, declined to be interviewed, but a spokeswoman said in a statement that the government had so far spent 250 billion Hungarian Forint, about $800 million, on the project. Fujimoto’s office did not respond to an interview request.In 2016, private security guards clashed with park conservationists at the future site of the House of Music. Gergely Karacsony, an opposition politician who was elected mayor of Budapest in 2019, did not attend the House of Music’s Jan. 22 unveiling, which took place on the Day of Hungarian Culture, a national celebration. The building, he wrote on social media, was born not of culture, but of violence.The House of Music from above. Critics have said the City Park development disturbs the natural environment and deprives locals of public space.via House of Music, HungaryIn a radio interview, Karacsony recently likened construction in a public park to urinating in a stoop of Holy Water: “You can do it, but it ruins why we are all there.”Orban, however, has sought to frame the museum district as a legacy project, and he has used it as a cudgel in his own war against what he sees as the West’s cultural decline. Unveiling the House of Music, he attacked critics of the park’s transformation as leftists who opposed beauty.“The Hungarian nation never forgets the names of those who built the country,” Orban said in a speech at the ceremony, adding that detractors are not remembered, “because the Hungarian nation simply casts them out of its memory.”He added that national election’s in April would be “a period” that would end debate over the future of the park.Since returning to power in 2010, Orban and his allies have taken over public media, as well as most of the country’s private media, to promulgate far-right conspiracy theories, attack the regime’s critics and advance Orban’s culture war (which has also reached academia and the arts.) Hungary’s cities are currently blanketed in political ads featuring Orban’s main political opponent as Mini-Me from the Austin Powers movies.Orban’s political machine interprets culture as “something that must be occupied or conquered,” said Krisztian Nyary, an author who grew up near City Park. “They are only capable of thinking in terms of political logic, but culture is different.”He added: “Do we need a House of Music? I don’t know. I see it’s a beautiful building, and I’m sure they’ll have exciting events, but it doesn’t belong there.” Repurposing the park transforms its function, he said, jeopardizing a valuable natural environment that has served as “the lungs” of surrounding neighborhoods.“I see it’s a beautiful building, and I’m sure they’ll have exciting events,” a local resident said of the House of Music, “but it doesn’t belong there.”Akos Stiller for The New York TimesThe park is bordered by the Sixth and Seventh districts, which Gabor Kerpel-Fronius, Budapest’s deputy mayor, said have the fewest green spaces in the city. The museum district, he added, could have been planned elsewhere, such as in a rundown rust zone nearby.Imre Kormendy, an architect, served as president of the Hungarian Society for Urban Planning when the museum district project began. He quickly learned that the government had no intention of meaningful consultation with stakeholders, he said.“Naïve professionals such as myself had no idea this project had already been decided,” he said. “Not even the Guggenheim was constructed inside of Central Park. Why should a city park be burdened with such development?”Yet Eszter Reisz, who raised her family in the area, said the park’s development was “fantastic” in comparison with its previously unkempt condition.For Klara Garay, a 71-year-old biology teacher who has lived near the park for decades, the repurposing of the park epitomizes the general climate in Hungary. She has been protesting against the park’s redevelopment since it began.“I feel despair,” she said. “This country is morally at such a low point.”Although the House of Music aims for community-building and education, the strife over its genesis is a reminder of why many of Hungary’s most celebrated musicians — such as Bartok, or Gyorgy Ligeti — left the country.“The political past of Hungary has been very problematic in certain phases of its history,” said the musicologist Felix Meyer, who runs the Paul Sacher Foundation in Switzerland. Many of the country’s talented musicians, he added, chose to live in the West.“It’s as simple as that,” Meyer said. “Hungary was a small country and could be very repressive, and not all of them felt appreciated. These are great minds, very liberal minds, people who needed space and opportunities, so it’s natural they made big careers outside of Hungary.”The acclaimed Hungarian pianist Andras Schiff, who has been in self-imposed exile for over a decade in protest of Orban’s politics, said by phone that “The way Orban supports culture is very selective.” Schiff added that Orban “will support everything that follows him, everybody who joins the bandwagon.”Orban’s government, Schiff said, tried “very hard to change history and change the facts, but it would be better to work on that, to admit faults and mistakes.”Asked if he would consider returning to Hungary if Mr. Orban is ousted in April, Mr. Schiff said, “Yes, certainly.”“I would love to come back,” he said. “This is the place I was born, it’s my mother tongue, and I deeply love Hungarian culture.” More