Ancient Voices of Children is a musical composition written in 1970 by the American composer George Crumb, and is subtitled "A cycle of songs on texts by Federico García Lorca".
The piece premiered at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., on October 31, 1970, as part of the Coolidge Foundation's 14th Festival of Chamber Music.
The first performers were the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, which featured Gilbert Kalish (piano), Jan DeGaetani (mezzo-soprano), and Michael Dash (boy soprano).
Perhaps the most original of these is produced by the soprano singing a kind of fantastic vocalise (based on purely phonetic sounds) into an amplified piano.
Of his inspiration for Ancient Voices of Children Crumb has provided the following insights: "It is sometimes of interest to a composer to recall the original impulse – the 'creative germ' – of a compositional project.