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Howard Blake Biography

 HOWARD BLAKE Short biography

(August 9th 2009)

Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians states that ‘Howard Blake has achieved fame as pianist, conductor and composer.’  He grew up in Sussex, from the age of 11 singing lead roles as a boy soprano and at 18 winning the Hastings Festival Scholarship to The Royal Academy of Music, where he studied piano with Harold Craxton and composition with Howard Ferguson. Over an intensely active career he has written numerous film scores, including 'The Duellists' with Sir Ridley Scott and Lord David Puttnam which gained the Special Jury Award at the Cannes Festival in 1977, 'A Month in the Country' with Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth which gained him the British Film Institute Anthony Asquith Award for musical excellence in 1989, and 'The Snowman', which was nominated for  an Oscar after its first screening on Channel 4 in 1982 and has won many other prizes internationally. His famous song ‘Walking in the Air’, for which he also wrote the lyrics, was the success that launched Aled Jones in 1985, whilst the concert version for narrator and orchestra is now performed world-wide as well as the full-length stage show/ballet, celebrating its 12th consecutive Christmas season in 2009 for Sadler’s Wells at The Peacock Theatre in London.  Howard has composed many concert works, including the Piano Concerto commissioned by The Philharmonia Orchestra for the 30th birthday of  Princess Diana in 1991 in which he also featured as soloist: the Violin Concerto to celebrate the centenary of the City of Leeds in 1993; the cantata to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations Organization in 1995, performed in the presence of the Royal Family in Westminster Hall; and the large-scale choral/orchestral work  'Benedictus', championed by Sir David Willcocks and the Bach Choir, given its London premiere in Westminster Cathedral in 1989 with Cardinal Hume as narrator and widely performed ever since.

More recent works are ‘Lifecycle’ - 24 pieces for solo piano - recorded for ABC Classics in 2003; ‘Songs of Truth and Glory’ , The Elgar Commission for the Three Choirs Festival in 2005; and a first recording of ‘The Land of Counterpane’ a song-cycle to words by Robert Louis Stevenson recorded in the Usher Hall Edinburgh in March 2007 with The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, which he conducted. In 2008 he was pianist with violinist Madeleine Mitchell in a CD for Naxos of his works for strings and piano and in August 2009 undertook a major recording for the same company conducting 'The Passion of Mary' and 'Four Songs of the Nativity' with London Voices and the RPO.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and in 1994 received the OBE for services to music.

Extended biography based on an article by Miranda Jackson in 'The Full Score'

Howard Blake achieved the sort of popularity most composers only dream about when in 1982 he composed the music for the innovative animated film 'The Snowman',with its much-loved song 'Walking in the Air'.

Such is the power of the screen that, for a while the name Howard Blake became synonymous with 'The Snowman', as if he had never written anything else.

Nothing could be further from the truth, as any member of a good choir will tell you. Choral societies across the world have performed his dramatic oratorio Benedictus and the cantata for chorus and orchestra, The Song of St Francis.

Both works were composed in the late seventies, and Benedictus was later championed by Sir David Willcocks, who described it as as  'a work for all centuries'. He conducted the recording at Abbey Road for Sony Classics with the tenor Robert Tear, The Bach Choir, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and boy choristers of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The work's drama and devotional intensity never fail to enthral audiences, and Benedictus has become a standard work in the choral society canon.

Blake's special affinity with choral music has led to many further commissions: Festival Mass for the opening of the Three Choirs Festival in 1987; Four Songs of the Nativity for the Bach Choir in 1990; Charter for Peace in 1995, commissioned by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations and performed at Westminster Hall in the presence of  the Royal Family, Prime Minister, members of  The Houses of Parliament and of  United Nations Organization. More recently Songs of Truth and Glory was composed as the Elgar Commission of 2005.

A younger parallel are some outstanding choral works for children and orchestras. The Bells (1991), a cantata on Edgar Alan Poe's fantastical poem, graphically summons up his strange world of 'mystery and imagination' (for which Howard has also created an animation script.)

All God's Creatures, premiered in the 1995 Guildford International Festival, draws together ten great poems about the animal kingdom. These deftly characterised settings are linked to form an extended choral cycle, packed with memorable melodic invention around which a film is presently being constructed.

The Land of Counterpane (1994), is a cycle of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson from 'A Child's Garden of Verses'. It is a work of haunting beauty which celebrates the innocence, joy and unfettered imagination of childhood. It was commissioned for the 300th anniversary of The Mary Erskine School Edinburgh whose choir recorded it with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in 2008 with a view to an animation film for which Howard has written the script.

While Blake's choral scores are spiced with cross-rhythms and a broad palette of colours, they nevertheless can be seen to have their roots in the English choral tradition. On the other hand, his purely orchestral scores have tended to defy categorisation. 'Neo-classical' is one label which had been used. Pamela Collins in 'Contemporary Composers' quoted Christopher Palmer's phrase,'the classical merits par excellence' mentioning in particular the 'purity of line', which he saw as an aspect of all his scores. 'However, the description neo-classical does not begin to convey the lyricism and passionate intensity of Blake's musical language. Each of his concert works has something to say, and says it intuitively in the most bold and direct way.'

The establishment of his style did not come easily. When at the age of 18 Blake won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, he found himself at odds with his contemporaries, and in the early parts of his career had to turn his hand to every sort of music imaginable; as pianist, arranger, orchestrator, conductor, as well as composer. But in the early 1970s he decided to retreat to the country to work again at the basic pillars of harmony and counterpoint, and after a period of rigorous study and contemplation, he began to write for the concert hall. From 1973 a constant stream of works has been produced, many of which have since been published or recorded.

Diversions for Cello for instance, was composed in 1973 and welcomed some 12 years later by the great French cellist, Maurice Gendron, who edited the work for publication. It was then premiered by Steven Isserlis and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Charles Groves, and later recorded by Robert Cohen for CBS/Sony.

Ballet became a major interest, with new works for: The Sadler`s Wells Royal Ballet - The Court of Love, with Dame Lynn Seymour, commissioned for HRH Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee:  The London Contemporary Dance Theatre (Meeting and Parting, Diversions, The Annunciation, ); Ballet Rambert (Reflections) – all with choreographer Robert North; for TV BBC Omnibus’s  Leda and the Swan. These experiences of ballet were later to produce both the large-scale three-act ballet for Swedish Ballet ‘Eva’ (1996) and the full evening ballet/stage show version of ‘The Snowman’ which has been a triumph for Sadler’s Wells at London’s West End Peacock Theatre over a period of 12 years (1998-2010).

Almost simultaneously to the above activity Howard’s interest in film was rekindled when Ridley Scott and David Puttman invited Blake to compose the score for The Duellists with Harvey Keitel, which in 1977 won the Special Jury Award at Cannes. This led to a spate of invitations to score other feature films, such as Agatha with Dustin Hoffman (1978) `The Riddle of the Sands’ with Michael Yorke (1978), `Blood Relatives` for Claude Chabrol, (1978), The Odd Job with David Jason (1978) an invitation to Hollywood to score `SOS Titanic` for CBS (1979), The Changeling with George C. Scott (1979),  Dino de Laurentiis’ Flash Gordon (1980), Tony Scott’s The Hunger(1982) and The Lords Of Discipline` at Paramount (1983).

However at that point in 1983 the overwhelming success of  Howard’s ‘music film with a song but no dialogue’, The Snowman, became self-evident. He was signed first as a recording artist with CBS Masterworks (1983) and secondly as a serious classical composer with Faber Music, the ‘doyen of contemporary classical music publishers’(1983).  One or two films were fitted in over the next couple of years: `The Canterville Ghost` (1986) with Sir John Gielgud and 'A Month in the Country' (1986)with Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth, which gained him the Anthony Asquith Award for musical excellence. However his schedule had become so busy with serious commissions, recordings and concerts that it was hard to find the time for film and ballet. (He was also invited to open the Royal Shakepeare Season at Stratford in 1984 with music for the new star Kenneth Branagh in Henry the Fifth at Stratford, and As You like It the year following)

The animated film, The Snowman, was first shown on Channel 4 on Christmas Eve 1982 and acclaimed as a masterpiece. The film, based on Raymond Briggs' picture book, has been shown on television every Christmas since; the video and CD are perennial best-sellers; the concert work for narrator and orchestra has become a Christmas classic, performed world-wide, and there is now, in addition, both a full length stage show and a ballet. Also popular in concerts for the young have been The Snowman's successors, Granpa (1986) (with Peter Ustinov and Sarah Brightman)and The Bear (1998) (introducing Charlotte Church) and a ‘Nursery Rhyme Overture’ (for orchestra, also used as a guessing-game.

The Clarinet Concerto was a commission from Thea King in 1984. 'The composer exploits the clarinet's capacity for quietness and sustained lyricism in the slow movement, while the two outer movements are dominated by ebullient cross-rhythms.'  The concerto was premiered and recorded on Hyperion by Thea King and The English Chamber Orchestra in 1985.

The Piano Concerto was commissioned in 1990 by the Philharmonia Orchestra to celebrate the 30th birthday of its patron Diana, then HRH The Princess of Wales, and the premiere given in her presence at the Royal Festival Hall with the composer as soloist. Edward Greenfield welcomed it in The Guardian as a 'concerto which should be agreeable in any programme…elegant, with enough salt in the orchestral mixture to give it flavour. It is good to find a composer looking to the Ravel concerto as a model…' A CD of it was released in 1991, again by CBS/Sony.

Blake has written numerous songs, including the memorable Shakespeare Songs, a cycle for tenor and string quartet, commissioned by the Chester Festival for Martyn Hill and the Medici. A hilarious one-act operatic spoof, The Station (written back in 1975) was given its first London performance in September 1995 and gave rise to a spate of operas about airports and stations by other composers.  There is also a body of piano music which includes the highly-entertaining Dances for Two Pianos, and the collection of 24 pieces in all the keys titled 'Lifecycle'.

Blake's largest-scale concerto is the Violin Concerto of 1993, commissioned by the Leeds City Council to celebrate the centenary of its charter, and named 'The Leeds'. A magnificent performance of it by the German violinist, Christiane Edinger, with Paul Daniel conducting the English Northern Philharmonia is recorded on ASV on a CD which also presents the suite for strings, A Month in the Country and Sinfonietta for brass. The Strad hailed the Violin Concerto in the most glowing terms possible: 'If Gorecki and Tavener have given us back tonality, then Blake - especially in his splendid Violin Concerto - has added melody, piquant but always tonal harmony, and traditional structures to the list of boons from the past…This is unequivocally great music, accessible, expressive, ravishingly beautiful.`

In 1993 Blake worked in Gothenburg, Sweden with the choreographer Robert North to develop The Snowman Ballet, a one-act work based on John Coates' cartoon film lasting about 55 minutes, which proved successful. However, having just completed the music for this, Blake was approached by Bill Alexander, the director of Birmingham Rep, who asked if it could be developed further. With North's permission, Blake and Alexander extended both score and scenario to 84 minutes and a production opened 4 days later than the ballet in Sweden. It was given the title 'The Snowman Stage Show' ,choreographed by Pat Garrett and directed by Bill Alexander.

In 1996 Howard was invited to compose and collaborate with Robert North on a 3-act ballet `Eva` for the newly-built Gothenburg Opera House for which he also conducted the first performances. Music for the Royal Shakespeare Company`s film of Midsummer Night`s Dream followed and shortly after that a set of 24 piano pieces in all the keys entitled `Lifecycle`, given its premiere in December 1996 in Gothenburg Opera by the composer.  For a while Blake moved to the countryside of Sweden which he found inspiring, producing a Flute Concerto, a choral work for Chester Cathedral to Edith Sitwell's Still falls the rain, and a new animated film `The Bear` for Channel 4. This featured the first film recording of Charlotte Church, and Channel 4 filmed a one- hour documentary to couple with the film`s TV release on Christmas Eve 1998.

When asked permission to stage a revival in 1997 Blake invited North over to re-create and extend his choreography within 'The Snowman Stage Show' and this fusion of ballet and theatre received huge acclaim, being filmed the following summer in the Birmingham Rep by Reiner Moritz and shown on BBC TV at Christmas 1998, at the same time transferring to Sadler's Wells' Peacock Theatre in the West End.

But after two seasons at the Peacock (1998/9) Blake decided with Ian Albery, the Artistic Director of Sadler's Wells, that the second act needed to be rewritten with a stronger narrative. The characters of Jack Frost and the Ice Princess were added, the order of the musical numbers relocated and the previous 'divertissements' taken out. This version has since proved its lasting worth, remaining unchanged up to the 2007/2008 seasons and signed on till at least 2011.

There was a sort of 'interim' version created by North for the Scottish Ballet seasons of 2001/2 which took considerable materials from the revised stage show but did not conform to the new shape of the second act nor subscribe to the all-important central concept of casting a small boy to play the main role. In Blake's view this version was artistically flawed and reinforced his decision that The Snowman Stage Show was the definitive version and that future theatrical versions should correspond with it.

In late 1998 Blake scored the feature film `My Life so Far`, produced by Lord Puttman and directed by Hugh Hudson, starring Colin Firth, and released by Miramax.

After completing that in the summer of 1999 he began work on 'Stabat Mater', a choral and orchestral work commissioned by The Lady Digby on behalf of The Summer Music of Dorset. It featured roles for solo soprano and treble and several spoken roles. The premiere was given in Sherborne Abbey on May 18th 2002 with the soprano Patricia Rozario, the Winchester Cathedral Choir and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Hill. In 2004 Blake revised the work to be fully sung and rechristened it 'The Passion of Mary', a first performance of which took place in Stockholm in October 2007. A London premiere celebrated Howard’s 70th birthday at the Cadogan Hall  and a brilliant recording made at Abbey Road was issued by Naxos at Easter 2010 which featured Howard’s own son, Robert William as the boy Jesus, Patricia Rozario as Mary, Richard Edgar-Wilson as Jesus the Man and David Wilson-Johnson as Prophet/Satan. The choir was London Voices directed by Terry Edwards and the orchestra the RPO conducted by the composer.

In June 2003 the celebrated organist Dame Gillian Weir gave the first performance of 'The Rise of The House of Usher', a solo organ work commissioned by the Scottish Arts Council for the Usher Hall Edinburgh. 2004 saw the release of a CD on ABC Classics of 'Lifecycle' recorded by pianist William Chen in Sydney, Australia with the subtitle 'piano music of imagination and reflection'. On August 8th 2005 the first performance of 'Songs of Truth and Glory' a song-cycle of 5 poems by George Herbert was given by The Elgar Chorale as part of the Three Choirs Festival, who commissioned it as 'The Elgar Commission' . Recent works include 'Winterdream' for children's choir, 'The Enchantment of Venus' for Basset-Clarinet, and a setting of William Soutar's poem 'Scotland' for chamber choir and organ to inaugurate the new West of Scotland University.

In 2008 Howard completed his passionate 'Violin Sonata' and recorded it for Naxos with violinist Madeleine Mitchell and himself as pianist. He is currently hoping to record the Edinburgh Quartet in a complete CD of his string quartets, featuring the new ‘Spieltrieb’ (the urge to play) specially composed for the 50th anniversary of the quartet.

 Howard Blake was an executive director of the Performing Right Society (1978-1987), was co-founder of the Association of Professional Composers in 1979, and was awarded the OBE for his services to music in the 1994 New Year's Honours list.

Howard Blake as pianist & conductor

Howard began playing by ear at the age of 6, and the following year started regular piano lessons. He was given vocal training and on entering Brighton Grammar School took lead soprano roles in their annual operas: Rose Maybud in 'Ruddigore', Bessie Throckmorton in 'Merrie England', Josephine in 'HMS Pinafore'. At 12 he began organ lessons, soon playing services for the parish church. His talent as a pianist was recognised when at 16 he was taken on by a notable teacher, Maud Hornsby, who suggested he prepare for a scholarship. She introduced him to Christine Pembridge, who had just moved to Brighton as head of piano studies at Roedean school. She had studied with Margaret Long in Paris and Adelina de Lara in London, once a pupil of Clara Schumann. She had won top piano prize at the RAM but then had tragically sufferred hand injury which prevented her continuing with a concert career. She demanded that Howard put all the energy and time that he could possibly afford into serious work at the piano. Howard had had virtually no serious coaching up to this point and was therefore considerably behind other young players who had worked at it since a young age. However in Spring 1957 Christine entered Howard for the Hastings Competitive Festival which uniquely offerred an Academy scholarship every three years. It was the first such thing he had done. He entered the Bach class, the Beethoven, the Chopin and The John Lockey Memorial Scholarship and won all four and began studies at The Royal Academy with Harold Craxton for piano and Howard Ferguson for composition. In his second term Ferguson required him to write a set of variations on a theme of Bartok. He composed a complex piece of virtuosic piano writing and Craxton suggested to his pupil Thorunn Tryggvaason that she perform it in her final Academy recital programme. Shortly after this she went to study with Lev Oborin in Moscow where she was to meet and marry Vladimir Ashenazy.

 In the following year Howard was invited to form a duo with the leader of the RAM orchestra, violinist Miles Baster. They explored much of the repertoire for that medium and learnt a number of the works by heart, the Cesar Franck being one of them. However Miles won a scholarship to the Juillard in New York and was away for a considerable time. Meanwhile Howard began to take an interest in film as an art form and the possibilities of combining music and image. When Miles returned they picked up the threads again undertaking a debut at The Reid Hall in The University of Edinburgh. This produced an offer to Miles to form The Edinburgh String Quartet and the duo came to an end. Howard's tenure at RAM expired and he found himself in a quandary, not wishing to teach and desperately wanting to experiment with film and composition. Fortuitously he was offerred a job at The National Film Theatre and while there was able to direct a film for which he also wrote the script and music. The film was shown and acquired by the BFI and Howard was offerred a scholarship to study film direction. He decided against this however, having realised that his passion lay more in music than anything else. He had missed playing enormously and returned to it, but wanting to broaden his interests into all types of music. His ability to play the piano not only by ear, but also in almost any style, resulted in an offer to work as a recording pianist, initially at Abbey Road Studios, and then at film, television and recording studios. He found this experience intensely interesting, working with many distinguished musicians and learning from them.

EMI itself invited him to make two albums for the Studio 2 label on which he played all types of instrument (piano,organ, harpsichord etc) and experimented with multi-track techniques in the first studio to introduce them. In 1966 he began playing keyboards on the sound-tracks for the internationally- succesful series 'The Avengers', but a year later, at the suggestion of composer Bernard Herrmann, took over from Laurie Johnson on 14 episodes as both composer and conductor. In fact it was Bernard Herrmann (at one time director of the CBS Sympony Orchestra in the USA) who encouraged him to conduct and gave him coaching. Another mentor was Eric Leinsdorf who proferred the advice: 'Either you can conduct or you can't'. Howard was thrown in at the deep end shortly after this when the famed US music-producer Quincy Jones invited him to conduct an orchestra of 120 players in a soundtrack album recording of 70mm film epic 'McKenna's Gold'. Howard had so far only conducted his own scores with at the most 25 players and recalls that giving the first downbeat for this huge ensemble felt like being struck by a 'tidal-wave' He was in such demand as composer and conductor that for a while his piano-playing somewhat lapsed, but when Quincy recorded his score for 'The Italian Job' he chose Howard to play keyboards.

In 1970 he sufferred a sort of collapse from overwork and after spending some time out down in Cornwall decided to retreat to the Sussex countryside and re-visit his whole view and practise of music, studying counterpoint, harmony and musical form in a rigorous daily timetable, a part of which was to re-work his piano-playing. One result of this was the creation of the Piano Quartet which he wrote for and recorded with violinist Jack Rothstein, violist Kenneth Essex and cellist Peter Willison, a recording finally released on Naxos in 2008. Encouraged by his friend Vladimir Ashkenazy he then composed 'Twelve piano pieces' giving the premiere himself on BBC radio. Recordings he made of this work were heard by choreographer Robert North at The London Contemporary Dance Theatre and were to form the score of a ballet 'Meeting and Parting' premiered in The Chatelet Theatre in Paris in 1975 with Howard as solo pianist.

 In 1977 he was signed to create a score for Ridley Scott's debut masterpiece 'The Duellists', which gained the jury prize at the Cannes Festival. This is one of Howard's favourite scores, and he composed, orchestrated, conducted and played solo piano on it. A spate of further films followed and his concentration tended to be on composing and conducting, but not only did he conduct his own film sessions, but frequently was engaged by The National Philharmonic Orchestra to conduct the scores of other composers. This orchestra in the seventies comprised the most sought-after orchestral personnel, players such as John Wilbraham, Alan Civil, Thea King, Emanuel Hurwitz, and the experience Howard gained from this was incalculable.

Returning to live in London in the early eighties, he was signed as a composer by Faber Music, a  contemporary classical music publishing company noted particularly for the late output of  Benjamin Britten. This signing coincided with Howard's composition of 'The Snowman', which included a substantial solo piano part. However, since Howard was conducting, he handed over the playing to Leslie Pearson, pianist with The Philharmonia. This relationship continued into The Barbican concert hall in 1983 when Raymond Gubbay invited Howard to conduct the concert version of The Snowman with his own lyrics and narration. The orchestra used was The Sinfonia of London of which Howard was made musical director, and these concerts were so succesful that they continued on at The Barbican for 11 years. Howard was firmly established as a conductor, and when he completed his Clarinet Concerto for The English Chamber Orchestra in 1984 was invited to conduct both the South Bank premiere and the CD for Hyperion Records.  The album of 'The Snowman' with Bernard Cribbins as narrator 'went platinum' and the unprecedented success of what was essentially a work for solo treble and chamber orchestra caused an extraordinary signing by CBS Masterworks in 1988 where Howard was given his own record label within CBS and a virtually free hand to record his own works. CBS hoped to match 'Snowman' with other projects. They released 'Granpa', a children's film opera with Peter Ustinov and Sarah Brightman which Howard wrote and conducted, and a recording of his large-scale oratorio 'Benedictus' with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which he produced.

In late 1989 The Philharmonia Orchestra commissioned Howard to compose a Piano Concerto to celebrate Diana, the Princess of Wales' 30th birthday. They hoped to engage Evgeny Kissin as soloist and Howard eagerly accepted the challenge. However as the concert date grew closer it became apparent that Kissin could not find sufficient time to study what was becoming a demanding virtuoso work. Manager David Whelton rang Howard one day and asked if he would consider playing it himself.  He agreed to do it if CBS would let him record the work prior to the premiere and then undertook a gruelling regime of daily practise to get back into top form as a pianist. The sessions took place in December 1989 at Sony Studios in London and the concert in the following May when Howard was able to meet Princess Diana and present her with a CD of the work at a reception after the concert at The Royal Festival Hall.. For Howard this occasion was a vindication of all his many years of work at the piano, a gift that for many of the reasons stated above had been in some ways underused. But what a glorious vindication!

The Sony release of the piano concerto drew attention to Howard's prowess as a pianist. At a reception in the Mozarteum in Salzburg his friend Ilona von Ronay requested he give an impromptu performance of  the 12 Piano Pieces with which she was familiar. She and all her Salzburg friends lit candles and processed into the darkened hall as Howard began to play. The pieces gave rise to enthusiastic applause and he was asked if he would create a further 12 pieces and premiere the completed work the following year. The collection of 24 pieces in every key was named 'Lifecycle', since it contained pieces covering a period of nearly 40 years of Howard's life. He gave a performance in Schloss Rosenegg in the Summer of 1996 and another in December in Gothenburg Opera House. It had been his intention to record the pieces himself but in 2002 when approached by ABC in Australia he flew to oversee the recording made by Shanghai-based pianist William Chen in the Eugene Goossens Concert Hall Sydney, an excellent recording with which he was delighted.

Howard's big birthday in 2008 persuaded him to conduct his dramatic oratorio 'The Passion of Mary' at The Cadogan Hall. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra enthusiastically agreed to this and a London premiere took place on 28th October with The RPO, the choir of London Voices and soprano Patricia Rozario. In the programme too was a brilliant performance of the Piano Concerto by William Chen with Howard conducting. On the same day Sony Classics re-released their 1991 recording of the piano concerto and Naxos released their new record of the works for piano and strings, on both of which CDs Howard was the pianist.

 ‘Howard Blake has achieved fame as pianist, conductor and composer’  (Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians 2004)

Programme note for the Philharmonia Orchestra: Christopher Palmer (1991)

Most composers, like other people, have to earn their own living once their training is completed and, from the 1920's on, many such professionally-trained composers have welcomed the opportunity to write for radio, film, television and other media outlets. One of two things generally happens to these composers: either they give up composing their 'own' music altogether, or - more often- the one career runs parallel  to the other. What is almost unheard of is for a composer deliberately to abandon a flourishing career in media-music, in mid-course, in order to devote himself exclusively to his 'own' or 'real' music. Yet this is what Howard Blake has done. What is even more unusual is that far from disowning his alter ego, the kind of musician he was and the kind of music he produced for the first 10 years of his professional life, he has found in them the mainspring of a remarkable personal renaissance. Much of the  raw material of his most significant  works -the Toccata for Orchestra and the Piano Concerto- derives from this source, but so refined, processed, enhanced, sublimated, as to be scarcely recognisable. The end product has a deceptive simplicity not unlike that of of Mozart. I mention Mozart advisedly since the classical qualities implicit in scores like The Snowman and the  Diversions for Cello and Orchestra are on full frontal display in the Piano Concerto. There is a child-like exuberance and spirit of delight...but a shrewd supervisory intelligence plots every move...and never allows the plain, ordinary, even commonplace musical language it speaks ever to to sound plain, ordinary or commonplace. Much of this is due to a strong feeling for line, and not just melody. Counterpoint is far more the essence of Blake's music than harmony. To cast a full-scale concert work in a simple diatonic style with no sense of deja vu is a considerable achievement.

Critical essay: Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Composers

Howard Blake is that rarity in the contemporary music scene, a genuinely popular composer. If he has a recent parallel, it is probably Leonard Bernstein, though he is an altogether more ‘natural’, less troubled composer than Bernstein even at his gentlest.

Blake’s reputation rests very squarely on the success of ‘The Snowman’, adapted from a story by Raymond Briggs and particularly on its haunting theme ‘Walking in the Air’. Since its first performance in 1982 the piece has become a Christmas stand-by in its animated form on British television. It is ironic but also inevitable that the popular and commercial successs of The Snowman, together with Blake’s background as a journeyman composer of television and film music, has tended to compromise his critical reputation. However, its merits and those of its successor Granpa are the classical merits par excellence and are clearly audible in Blake’s concert music.

The purity of line and lack of clutter that make ‘Walking in the Air’ so utterly and immediately memorable, is also what animates the Clarinet Concerto and a remarkable overture The Conquest of Space, in which Blake’s use of unusual sonorities (ondes martenot or synthesizer, and a choir) complements his apparent conviction that imaginative composition is still feasible within a constantly renewing harmonic tradition. At the end of the 1970s he retreated to the country to work again at the basic pillars of harmony and counterpoint, slowly refining a technique and language that have little in common with most contemporary academic music. Blake is hostile to avant-gardist gestures, and to serialism. His most obvious (distant) influence is Mozart, but there is also something of his one-time teacher Howard Ferguson's neo-classical idiom and a strong sense of music as a cultural adhesive, rebonding a society fractured by civilisation and its discontents. His major work to date, Benedictus, is a powerful and humane expression of faith in the transcendent power of imagination.

Though undoubtedly conservative, Blake is no reactionary. His lyrics are often wryly ironic and his scoring subtly inflected. A background in jazz is evident in his firm, but not mechanical rhythm: the 1984 Concert  Dances, in both its piano concertante and wind-band versions, is an unstuffy set of exercises in popular forms, ragtime, jump, boogie, rock, cha-cha, but if the names unavoidably suggest the ‘rhythm selectors’ attached to cheap electric keyboards, there is nothing mechanical about Blake’s variations on basic signatures and pulses.

 Not the least significant aspect of Blake’s recent career has been a recording contract – and personalized ‘HB’ index number! – with CBS Records, a company noted for occasional but imaginative experiments of this sort. Blake is unembarrassed and unhindered by his popularity. It is, as it was with Mozart, simply a response to a spontaneous melodic gift underpinned with considerable technical skill. (Pamela Collins)

Apologia: Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Composers

I believe that Schoenberg’s intellectual crusade to abolish melody, harmony and rhythm dealt a near death-blow to the inspired creation of meaningful new music in the second half of the twentieth-century. I believe that all great music evolves from the critical assimilation of all available tradition, and secondly by attention to the popular current tonal innovations of the day.

I believe in the alchemical transmutation of material of Jung and not the ivory-tower attempt at language-creation which derives at second-hand from Wagner’s view of the artist as ersatz-God. I believe, with Plato, that the composer’s function is to try to balance and reconcile the conflicting elements of society within his music, and that by doing so in an accessible and comprehensible language he may then hope to have the vision to uplift and inspire society at large. I believe that the composer can only achieve this function by working with humility as a cratftsman responding to the requirements of the day: that is, as William Blake said’ ‘Eternity is in love with the productions of time’. My own music is melodic, harmonic, contrapuntal, rhythmic, hopefully inspirational and hopefully non-elitist. (Howard Blake)

PRESS COMMENTS

From Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2004)...

Howard Blake has achieved fame as pianist, conductor and composer... 

From a programme note  by Christopher Palmer'...

Most composers, like other people, have to earn their own living once their training is completed and, from the 1920's on, many such professionally-trained composers have welcomed the opportunity to write for radio, film, television and other media outlets. One of two things generally happens to these composers: either they give up composing their 'own' music altogether, or - more often- the one career runs parallel  to the other. What is almost unheard of is for a composer deliberately to abandon a flourishing career in media-music, in mid-course, in order to devote himself exclusively to his 'own' or 'real' music. Yet this is what Howard Blake has done. What is even more unusual is that far from disowning his alter ego, the kind of musician he was and the kind of music he produced for the first 25 years of his professional life, he has found in them the mainspring of a remarkable personal  rennaissence. Much of the  raw material of his most significant  works -the Toccata for Orchestra and the Piano Concerto- derives from this source, but so refined, processed, enhanced, sublimated, as to be scarcely recognisable. The end product has a deceptive simplicity not unlike that of of Mozart. I mention Mozart advisedly since the classical qualities implicit in scores like The Snowman and the  Diversions for Cello and Orchestra are on full frontal display in the Piano Concerto. There is a child-like exuberance and spirit of delight...but a shrewd supervisory intelligence plots every move...and never allows the plain, ordinary, even commonplace musical language it speaks ever to to sound plain, ordinary or commonplace. Much of this is due to a strong feeling for line, and not just melody. Counterpoint is far more the essence of Blake's music than harmony. To cast a full-scale concert work in a simple diatonic style with no sense of deja vu is a considerable achievement.

From The Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Composers...

Howard Blake is that rarity in the contemporary music scene, a genuinely popular composer. If he has a recent parallel, it is probably Leonard Bernstein, though he is an altogether more ''natural'', less troubled composer than Bernstein at his gentlest... It is ironic but also inevitable that the popular and commercial success of  The Snowman.. tended to compromise his critical reputation. However, its merits, and those of its successor, Granpa, are the classical merits par excellence and are clearly audible in Blake's concert music.  His most obvious (distant) influence is Mozart, but there is also something of his one-time teacher Howard Ferguson's neo-classical idiom and a strong sense of of music as a cultural adhesive, rebonding a society fractured by civilisation and its discontents. His major work to date, Benedictus, is a powerful and humane expression of faith in the transcendent power of imagination. Blake is unembarrassed and unhindered by his popularity. It is, as it was  with Mozart, simply a response to a spontaneous melodic gift underpinned with considerable technical skill. 

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