Blond Eckbert - Music

Music

The two-act version of Blond Eckbert is scored for double woodwind, (second players doubling piccolo, cor anglais, bass clarinet and contrabassoon,) four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, timpani and one other percussion player, harp and strings. The percussion consists of glockenspiel, suspended cymbal, xylophone, tenor drum, bell or small gong and three differently pitched cowbells. The pocket version is written for oboe, 2 clarinets (1 doubling bass clarinet), 2 horns, harp, 2 violins, and 2 cellos with no chorus.

Tommasini recognises Weir's musical voice as individual but he considers her to be more interested in consolidating the musical past than innovation or contemporary schools of music. Her music is, in Holland's words, "neither terribly old nor terribly new". While its language is modernist, it does not go far into the realms of dissonance. Tommasini lists Berg, Messaien, big band jazz and German romanticism as among the influences on her. When interviewed for the programme notes to the first production, Weir placed herself musically more in a Stravinskian tradition than one based on Britten.

Much of the vocal writing consists of short phrases of speech song, written more to support the text than to be musically interesting in itself. It is accompanied by chordal progressions or brief bursts of melody in the orchestra.

When Tom Service reviewed the chamber version of the opera for the Guardian, he felt that the virtues of Weir's compact musical style and her ability to tell a story with the smallest of musical gestures are even more evident in the later version than in the original.

While Tommasini welcomed the recording of Blond Eckbert and Service is enthusiastic about both its versions, other critics are more ambivalent. Holland finds the work episodic and lacking in development. He recognises Weir's ear for orchestration and graceful writing but feels she could have done more with it. Andrew Clark of the Financial Times also feels that more might have been made of the work by providing orchestral interludes or extended vocal numbers. However, he also identifies compactness as one of the works virtues.

Writing in Grove, David C. H. Wright sees a deliberate strategy in the understatement of much of the music: the conclusion of the opera, with the orchestra providing the composer's commentary on events, is all the more powerful because of the contrast with the first act.