Easley Blackwood, Jr. (1933 - 2023)

[eschiss1]

And if one's looking for composers who went from 12-tone/serial music to more consonant practice, the late Einojuhani Rautavaara (whose 7th symphony, for example, is certainly no one's idea of a 19th-century work but is unlikely to be mistaken for Bruno Maderna either, and is undeniably, comparatively, much more tonal and consonant than his somewhat serial yet also aleatoric (an odd combination!!) 5th symphony was...) belongs in the list...

[Ilja]

Given that Schoenberg never taught his students twelve-tone composition, afaik, unlikely.

He didn't have to. But it seems that Boulez came to the same sort of conclusion about where music had to go. Now, that is tyranny.

But not uncommon in the French intellectual milieu of the time, where such ideological machismo seemed to be de rigueur for a while.

[John Boyer]

Well, so much for the Second Viennese School and French Existentialism!  Honh, Honh!  Those intellectuals, no?!

Coming back to Easley Blackwood, I simply would recommend those who have not heard his later tonal music to give it a try. And if perchance you like the Second Viennese School (full disclosure: I do) then you won't be harmed by the rest of it either.

The Cello Sonata is a good place to start, as is the disc of piano works "Blackwood Plays Blackwood", since neither contains anything atonal. 

[eschiss1]

What do people think of his 5th symphony (meant to sound somewhat like Sibelius if he became interested in some of the impressionism of Casella or Szymanowski)? I think I heard the premiere on the radio around 1991, and I see that there's been a recording on Cedille...

[John Boyer]

What do people think of his 5th symphony (meant to sound somewhat like Sibelius if he became interested in some of the impressionism of Casella or Szymanowski)? I think I heard the premiere on the radio around 1991, and I see that there's been a recording on Cedille...

Mark mentioned liking it earlier in this thread.  I enjoy it too.

[Mark Thomas]

The Fifth is clearly a 20th century symphony, but it's really quite approachable for those of us with 19th century sensibilities. It's tonal, its harmonic language becomes less of its time (1990) as the three movements progress, so that the long central slow movement is a thoroughly romantic outpouring and the perky finale too could have been written at the end of the 1800s. There are memorable melodies and the often busy string writing does indeed remind one of Sibelius, although I wouldn't say that the work "sounds like" Sibelius at all. That said, if you're looking for Blackwood in 100% 19th century vein then follow up on John's recommendations of the Cello Sonata and the piano music, as I did (thanks again, John). The Sonata is a big 40 minute piece which could have been composed in the 1850s whilst the piano music (the CD includes his Piano Sonata) is similarly approachable. One wouldn't guess that this was music composed in the 1980s and 90s.

[Alan Howe]

I've ordered his extraordinarily romantic-sounding Cello Sonata. What a stylistic journey he went on over the course of his life! Thanks for all the pointers to his best music.

[John Boyer]

I've ordered his extraordinarily romantic-sounding Cello Sonata. What a stylistic journey he went on over the course of his life! Thanks for all the pointers to his best music.

I think you will like his clarinet sonatas, too. Or more accurately, clarinet sonata and a clarinet sonatina.  These are also in a very much in a 19th century idiom. They are coupled with the Reger Third Sonata, which most of us know. The Reger is the most modern sounding of the three, to give you an idea of the conservative idiom of the Blackwood sonatas.

I just listened again to the Fifth Symphony and agree very much with Mark's assessment, except that I do hear more Sibelius in this work than Mark does. Not that you would mistake it for Sibelius, as Mark points out, but it does sound like the work, say, of one of Sibelius's colleagues, though one with a slightly more modern bent.  There are many passages, both in orchestration and tonal color, that made me think of Sibelius's Fourth Symphony, which I've always felt was the most forward-looking of the seven, although it was in a direction that Sibelius backed away from in his subsequent works.  Anyway, it was the perfect accompaniment to the ritual of brewing coffee on this very cold morning: 6 below zero Fahrenheit.

Blackwood himself comments on this in another excerpt of that interview with James Ginsberg:

JG: But why write in obviously older idioms? Why not take advantage of all the advances in tonal musical vocabulary?

EB: I don't see that that is necessarily advantageous. The entire body of altered chords that make up the harmonic vocabulary of tonal music had been discovered by 1905, and I don't think there is anything left to be unearthed. So a composer writing tonally today is consciously or unconsciously choosing a harmonic style whose vocabulary has been with us for nearly a century. Having taught traditional harmony since 1958, I feel at home in a wide variety of styles and really cannot write without thinking about the idiom in which I am working. Moreover, I am fascinated by the idea of recreating styles, like the one I imagine Schubert would have discovered had he lived until 1845. Of course, I think it would be presumptuous to compose in an idiom where there already exists a large number of successful works. For example, to write a string quartet in the style Beethoven was using around 1800 would really be gilding the lily.

Having chosen a style, my own muse then takes over and the work is very much my own. For example, I conceived of my Fifth Symphony [being premiered by the Chicago Symphony in May 1992] — which, incidentally, does use the full range of the tonal harmonic vocabulary and even has some non-tonal passages — as the kind of piece Sibelius would have written in 1915 if had he experimented a bit with the kind of modernism that was prevalent in Europe at that time (he never did). Having recently listened to some of Sibelius's major works, I would have to say that as an imitation of Sibelius my Symphony is not a success. But that is not how it should be judged. The work should be evaluated on its own merits as a new composition written in a carefully chosen style. I just happen to be more interested in working entirely within set idioms than creating Stravinskiesque reflections on older styles.

 

[Alan Howe]

That's really fascinating and enlightening - thanks, John.

[eschiss1]

It's worth mentioning his interest in the musical, harmonic, etc. properties of microtonal/other-subdivision scales, to which he applied a lot of time and which, unlike the other music of his we've discussed, was - especially in the form in which he approached it (not just bending tones of a 12-note scale like Haba) - was probably almost unique to him (maybe/just about/at first.)

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks, Eric. He was obviously a fascinating and independent personality. By the way, his Third String Quartet is also composed in a thoroughly 19th century idiom - not so the very much earlier first two, however.