Celebrated composer George Crumb, was joined by music professors Eugene Narmour and Anna Weesner of Penn, and Robert Maggio of West Chester University in a special preconcert panel discussion at 7:00 pm of Crumb's Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale), a work that symbolizes prehistoric time.

Following an introduction by Prof. Narmour, discussion quickly turned to the nature of time and timelessness in the music of George Crumb, and in particular in the composition of the Vox Balaenae. Composed in 1971 for the New York Camerata, the Vox Balanae took as its inspiration the then newly recorded song of whales. Using amplified instruments to suggest the otherworldliness of the submarine voice of the whale.

Prof. Narmour, making reference to Beethoven's distance and disinterest from pieces that he had composed earlier in his career, asked Prof. Crumb if a composition composed some thirty years ago maintained any relevance for him as the composer. Crumb's reply was that "with each different group of performers [the Vox Balanae] is reborn" and thus will always maintain a newness that is perhaps obscured by the date of composition. The downside, according to Crumb, is that the music is ever "vulnerable to less than convincing performances."

Focusing more directly on the nature of time in the performance of the Vox Balanae, which incorporates as one of its primary themes evolutionary and geological time, the panel questioned how a piece of music - founded in notions of mathematically precise rhythms - could nonetheless appear to create moments of timelessness. To this query Crumb's reply was that "Musical time has nothing at all to do with clock time. Musical time is psychological time." Thus, Crumb's insight would seem to deny the apparent association between performance - which is metered with a significant degree of precision - and the perception of performance within which is revealed the expression of timelessness.

The panel discussion concluded with several questions from the audience before the room adjurned to the Annenberg Center for the performance of Eighth Blackbird Sextet.

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