"...Blank's interest in harmony reaches far beyond the traditional sense. His music reflects an interest in key centers, pitch centers, and, in some cases, no referential center at all. His music exhibits qualities of chromatically conceived melodic writing in a contrapuntal setting, traditional harmony (as in the Nocturne), the structural use of the tritone to create ambiguity, pandiatonicism, and the coloristic characteristics of the quarter-tone steps and the harmonic grace note. Much of his music is harmonically organized with clearly related beginning and concluding key areas. To impart unity in a piece, thematic materials often recurs in its original key. Overall, Blank will instinctively determine how harmony is to function in a particular composition." -- p. 42, The Bassoon Music of Allan Blank, by Tina Marie Carpenter.