Easley Blackwood Jr.

Biography

Easley Blackwood Jr. came into the world on April 21, 1933, in Indianapolis, Indiana. He began piano studies there and, by age 14, was already performing solo spots with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. After attending several U.S. schools—including Yale University, where he picked up a Master of Arts degree—he headed to Paris for further study from 1954 to 1956. Among his teachers were Olivier Messiaen, Paul Hindemith, and Nadia Boulanger. For four decades, from 1958 to 1997, Blackwood taught at the University of Chicago, mostly as a Professor, and later became Professor Emeritus. He also won the Quantrell Award. His early works used polyrhythm and wide melodic leaps, and critics have described them as atonal but formally conservative. Then, around 1980–81, he made a sharp turn, putting out Twelve Microtonal Etudes for Electronic Music Media. These pieces employed microtonality to craft unusual equal-tempered scales. He worked through every equal temperament from 13 to 24, including 15-ET and 19-ET. While he recorded most of these on a synthesizer, his Suite in 15-Note Equal Tuning, Op. 33, was performed live on a custom-built guitar. Later, his style shifted toward late-19th-century tonality, with a harmonic language he compared to Verdi, Ravel, and Franck. As a pianist, Blackwood championed a wide range of music, including works by Charles Ives, Pierre Boulez, and the Second Viennese School. He also played piano in the chamber group Chicago Pro Musica, whose members largely came from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 1985, he published the book The Structure of Recognizable Diatonic Tunings. Starting in the 1990s, Cedille Records released several of his recordings, including Introducing Easley Blackwood.