ABSTRACT
George Crumb's quotation of Schubert in the middle of Black Angels means different things to different people. To some, it might merely be sad music, to others, classical music, or perhaps Renaissance music, to others still, it might be the second movement of Schubert's String Quartet in D Minor, the 'Death and the Maiden' quartet. Black Angels makes a particularly interesting case-study for investigating the role played by familiarity in musical communication. The fundamental question, therefore, is how the information posited by its composer is understood to be meaningful by listeners, although in order to situate this discussion more generally, the relationship between music and familiarity is discussed. One final issue arises from the notion of familiarity as a structural force. The basic communicative mechanism asserted in Black Angels is commonly accepted and experienced in everyday life: the bundles of attributes presented by music become associated with extra-musical meanings as its familiarity grows and spreads.
