The Jumblies

Twentieth-century American composer Allan Blank started his musical education in New York, gaining admittance to Juilliard through his talent as a skilled violinist. He continued further schooling in New York and schools in the Midwest before attaining a spot in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 1950. Despite the man’s obvious talent for performance, his legacy appears to have survived primarily through his work as a composer. Indeed, it was in the capacity of composer that he served at several universities, including Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond before his death in 2013.

Blank’s 2003 composition The Jumblies sets a poem of the same name by the famed mid-19th century author and illustrator of “nonsense,” Edward Lear. The work includes six verses, each of which ends with the same four-line refrain:

Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

A narrator recites the first several lines of each verse, followed by an instrumental interlude with clarinet, cello, and piano. Eventually the singer (which may or may not be the same individual as the narrator) delivers the last four lines of the stanza to instrumental accompaniment. While predictable inasmuch as it follows this formal structure, The Jumblies could not be more unpredictable in terms of Blank’s musical setting. At times playful, then ridiculous, reflective and tender yet challenging, this work provides us with a fascinating journey through the creative mind of Allan Blank.

(c) Emily Mascinup and Jason Stell