Marcus Blunt

Scottish Music Centre

Marcus Blunt - Press

Intervallic Symbols

Murray McLachlan
Scottish Music Centre
29 May 2007

In tracing Marcus Blunt's odyssey from innocence to originality, Murray McLachlan traverses a soundscape of beguiling variety.

Born in 1947 and educated at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, Marcus Blunt has settled in rural Dumfries-shire, Scotland, for the past 18 years. His substantial output includes music for orchestra, chamber works and a significant number of solo piano pieces. Performances over the years have been given throughout the UK, on BBC Radio 3, and at international festivals by artists such as the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, the Joachim Piano Trio, Kathryn Stott, Peter Evans and Ian Brown.

As a student in the '60s Blunt quickly realized the necessity of finding his own voice as a composer. In an era of iconoclasm and instability it was Michael Tippett, and his inclination towards contrapuntal textures, that initially seemed most sympathetic, but even in Blunt's earliest piano pieces, one can sense independent preferences that were later to become blueprints of his distinctive style. The Seven Preludes (1967-79) were mostly written in the composer's undergraduate years. Numbers 1-3 may be unremarkable and sparsely austere, but No 4, 'Homage to Scarlatti', sparklingly structured in the form of that master's sonatas, develops via intervallic growth and diminution. This can be seen at its opening where the six note motif expands, whilst in bar 2 the reverse procedure can be seen with a 4-part chord in which a clear pattern of diminishing intervals from the bass upwards is constructed - viz C sharp to A natural (minor sixth) to E natural (perfect fifth) to B flat (diminished fifth). This early instance of a compositional approach clearly influenced by Scriabin's 'mystic chord' and Messiaen's 'Modes of limited transposition' was gradually to evolve and permeate Blunt's compositional technique to an enormous extent, so much so that in time it became the essential seed of his own harmonic system.

For an instant 'Bluntian soundscape', try out the following quasi-improvisatory flourish the next time you sit down at your piano: begin with the second lowest A on the keyboard, then ascend, slowly and with majesty, in a pattern of diminished intervals to the G above it, (minor seventh), followed by E (major sixth), middle C (minor sixth), G (perfect fifth), C sharp (augmented fourth), F sharp (perfect fourth), A sharp (major third), C sharp (minor third) and D sharp (major second). Heroic and exotic stuff indeed! And when you then gradually extend this series of intervals upwards so that they open out again, further possibilities obviously occur. Blunt's mature style fully exploits these opportunities in both harmonic and linear senses.

By the time Blunt composed his seven minute long Sonata No 3 The Life Force (premiered in 1991 by John Lenehan and broadcast from St David's Hall by Kathryn Stott thereafter), his specific compositional stigmata meant that virtually every chord and most of the melodic lines in the piece (1988, revised '94) can be analysed via his diminished intervallic system. Sonata No 3 is most persuasive, its title a reference to George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman. Here I feel that there is a newly won fluidity and compositional ease in Blunt's writing, as though he has shed some of the self-consciousness one occasionally senses in harmonic progressions from some of his earlier works, such as the First Piano Sonata of 1972, despite its incisive rhythms, counterpoint and striking textures.

There are many admirable, rewarding qualities in the Second Sonata (1978), especially in its haunting, ghostly first movement. One senses extra pianistic qualities in the energetic finale here, and this outgoing characteristic is especially attractive in the later works from Blunt's pen, such as the miniature Iona Prelude (1982), turning the piano into a harp under the spell of late Scriabin, the Fantasy on SCRiABin (1992), bathed in radiant, luminous and warm textures, the Prelude on a Fugue theme of Bach (2000) - one could scarcely imagine a more individualistic treatment of the subject from the D major Fugue in Book 2 of the '48! - and the exquisitely poetic Fantasy on the name GABRiEL FAURÉ (2001), dedicated to Kathryn Stott. It is not without some anticipation and curiosity that I await the forthcoming and promised Fantasy on the name MuRRAy MCLACHLAn, if and when it appears ...

Though there are other charming and persuasive miniatures that are especially approachable for talented amateurs to perform in his catalogue (eg the Malta and November Nocturnes and Nocturne on the name FRAnk BayFoRD, the great sadness is that so far Blunt's substantial 26-minute-long three-movement Piano Concerto has remained unperformed. It took three years of hard labour to complete (1992-95) and so dates from a period when the composer's harmonic approach was completely inevitable and effortless, as can readily be seen in the opening lines of its first movement. The virtuosity of the solo part demands tremendous fluidity in execution, with cascades of passagework prevalent throughout, acting as a foil to the often richly sonorous orchestral writing. Rhythmic energy most certainly plays an important role too in a work which with its extensive cross-rhythms and syncopations can almost seem inspired by jazz at times. There are quasi-skeletal textures in moments of extreme contrast, as well as comments from the solo part which can at times only be described as 'witticisms'. In a sense it is an 'anti concerto' in its determination to avoid long lyrical lines in the solo part, but the romantic longing and lushness always seeps through from the orchestral writing. The piano comments and weaves its way over this rich backcloth with melismatic fluidity and rhapsodic élan. And there are pianistic moments of beguiling, stark beauty, such as the first (solo) entry in the slow movement, not to mention the lush textures that follow.

Emotionally there is much that evokes a great sense of the open space. Anyone who has wandered in the Galloway forests after a brief autumnal shower will know exactly what I mean when I refer to the close relation this music has at times to the environment whence it emanated (eg, from figure 70 in the score).

The concerto's finale is appropriately energetic, with hefty solo demands, especially in the substantial cadenza. Beginning with a sense of lonely desolation, it gradually builds towards out-size virtuosity of titanic proportions. Indeed all of the major climaxes in this so far undiscovered concerto are weighted and impressively orchestrated for maximum excitement and memorability.

Article reprinted with permission from the July / August 2005 issue of Piano magazine.