Biography
Sir John Blackwood McEwen (13 April 1868 – 14 June 1948) was a Scottish classical composer and educator.
He is best known for orchestral works on his native Galloway, such as A Solway Symphony (1909), Hills o' Heather and Where the Wild Thyme Blows (1918). His Three Border Ballads include "Grey Galloway" (1908), "The Demon Lover" (1906–1907) and "Coronach" (1906). Other works include Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, a setting of The Hymn from Milton's Ode of the same title. He wrote a Viola Concerto in 1901 at the request of Lionel Tertis, and nineteen string quartets (only seventeen are numbered), written over a fifty-year period (1893–1947).
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He invented the term "inflected speech" and introduced it in his 14 Poems for inflected voice and piano after Margaret Forbes in 1943. This is equivalent to the sprechgesang of Arnold Schoenberg.
His main influences appear to be Scottish folk music, Jean Sibelius and Richard Wagner, for example, in the third movement of A Solway Symphony which shows a very strong influence from Siegfried's Rhine Journey. Most of his music is not so derivative. He seems to have been a sort of predecessor of the Scottish Renaissance in trying to use Scottish folk culture, but in a non-sentimental manner.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.