Early in his life he rejected the widespread modernist usage of serialism, developing a highly personal musical language which "range[s] in mood from peaceful to nightmarish".
The unusual timbres he employs evoke a surrealist atmosphere which portray emotions of considerable intensity with vast and sometimes haunting soundscapes.
[6] The use of pastiche is also found in his music,[7] as is text by Federico García Lorca, whose poetry Crumb set eleven times.
[10] George, Jr. began to compose at an early age and had two of his orchestral works performed by the Charleston Symphony Orchestra while he was still in his teens.
[15] In this period, Crumb shared with a number of other young composers regarded as being under the umbrella of "new accessibility" a desire to reach out to alienated audiences.
In works like Ancient Voices of Children (1970), Crumb employed theatrical ritual, using evocative masks, costumes, and sonorities.
[17] Several of Crumb's works, including the four books of madrigals he wrote in the late 1960s and Ancient Voices of Children, a song cycle for two singers and small instrumental ensemble—including a toy piano (1970), are settings of texts by Federico García Lorca.
[19] Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Darkland) was written in 1970, and published in 1971, in protest against the Vietnam War, using spoken word, bowed water glasses and electronics.
It is one of Crumb's best known pieces, and has been recorded by several groups, including the Kronos Quartet,[20] whose formation was inspired when violinist David Harrington first heard Black Angels.
[18] Each of these works is a set of arrangements of American hymns, spirituals, and popular tunes: Crumb originally planned to produce four such volumes,[26] but in fact he continued to produce additional sets after the fourth (The Winds of Destiny) was written, with the seventh volume of the series (Voices from the Heartland) completed in 2010.
[13] Typically these settings preserve the familiar tunes more-or-less intact,[27] but the accompaniments for amplified piano and percussionists use a very wide range of musical techniques and exotic sounds.
[28] Crumb retired from teaching in 1995,[13] though in early 2002 he was appointed with David Burge to a joint residency at Arizona State University.
[1][13] After initially being influenced by Anton Webern, Crumb became interested in exploring unusual timbres, something he considered as important as rhythm, harmony, and counterpoint.
[…] This awareness of music in its largest sense—as a worldwide phenomenon—will inevitably have enormous consequences for the music of the future.” Of this worldview, which Crumb noted he still followed 37 years later in a 2017 interview for VAN Magazine, William Dougherty wrote: "Wherever one stands on the ethics of appropriation, it’s undeniable that Crumb, by incorporating in his work sounds from other cultures, succeeded in finding a timbrally rich sound world unlike any of his contemporaries.
"[28] Of his legacy, Michael Schell said "on the morning of his death Crumb was arguably the most important living composer of piano music, and the last giant in a distinctively American line of innovative percussion writers.".
[45] Among Crumb's students are the composers Ofer Ben-Amots,[46] Margaret Brouwer,[47] Uri Caine,[48] Robert Carl,[49] Osvaldo Golijov, Jennifer Higdon,[13] Cynthia Cozette Lee,[50] Gerald Levinson,[51] Christopher Rouse, Melinda Wagner[13] and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon.