WALKING IN THE AIR CAN BE DANGEROUS op.428 (January 2011)

My great-grandfather on my mother's side was Henry Andrews, born in 1832, who began life as a journalist and ended up as a non-conformist preacher, pastor of the Quay Congregational Church in Woodbridge, Suffolk from 1870 to 1887. His wife Harriet Augusta (nee Thurston) was musical and played the organ. Their second daughter, born in 1866, the high-spirited Leisa Lovely, was my grandmother, and she inherited the musical gene, singing and playing violin and piano.

She married Leader, son of Funston Benson, the owner of a family firm puryeying high-class leather goods at establishments around London. Leeder ran one at 70 Upper Street, Islington, the large silver BENSON sign remaining until late in the twentieth century. He was a gentle soul who played the flute, a talent passed on to his son Alec. Alec's two older sisters, Gladys and Dolly, played the piano a little, but real talent was inherited by my mother, their younger sister Grace, both as pianist and violinist. Unfortunately, where her mother abounded in self-confidence, Grace was timid and self-deprecating. In early 1914 at the age of 17 she was invited to join the prestigious Queen's Hall Orchestra as a violinist, but was too shy to accept. With the outbreak of war the boys whom she had grown up with were prime officer material and eager to join up. Most left for the trenches and didn't return.

At fifty Leader died of a heart attack whilst cranking a car by the High Middleton statue at Islington Green and my unpredictable grandmother sold the business, acquired a new husband and went to live in the South of France. Grace was left to fend for herself and the disintegration of her home was a loss and shock. She would recall her early life in Islington with deep affection: the Agricultural Hall where she could hear lions roaring when the circus came; Collins Music Hall echoing with the sound of laughter and applause, The Biograph on the corner showing silent films with piano, walking in column to Union Chapel on Sundays, her father in a silk top hat arm in arm with her mother, the four children marching behind, a maid and errand-boy bringing up the rear.

Her cousin Dora Rowse was a pianist and music teacher whose husband played the organ at the Alexandra Palace: her cousin Mary was an actress in the Frank Benson Shakepeare Company, once playing Celia to Tallulah Bankhead's Rosalind. She married Jack Bligh, a film stunt-man and friend of Charlie Chaplin, wrote novels, founded a theatre company in Johannesburg and broadcast talks on radio. Her cousin Ivan Andrews in Muswell Hill gained a PhD at 22 and pioneered diesel technology. He also had the musical gene, playing excellent Bach on the piano and visiting Bruges to play the carillon for his holidays.

Grace got a civil service job in the Accountant General's office of the GPO where she was befriended by office superintendent Constance White and her sister Elsie, committed members of the Plymouth Brethren. She took lodgings near them in Ealing, went to meetings and became immersed in this very narrow religion. Constance and Elsie loved 'little Gracie' and they took her everywhere with them. The shock of her family's sudden disintegration and the behaviour of her mother no doubt assisted her descent into this change of belief pattern. She had lost her family but found another with the Brethren.

Plymouth Brethren hold the strictest of puritanical outlooks; one should only pursue that which is 'profitable in the sight of God'; one's 'yea' should be 'yea' and one's 'nay' should be 'nay'; to lie to anyone is to lie to God and He will punish you. They don't believe in unprofitable pastimes like the cinema, or romantic novels, or the theatre, or dancing, or love songs or the playing of music - unless it is the simplest of hymns, sung purely to the glory of God, hymns sentimental and vulgar, such as those of Sankey. For my mother to have to play and sing this stuff after an upbringing in classical music must have been hard, but she took it, and by the time she was introduced to a devout young Brethren preacher, she seems to have lost any rational defence system that might have given her second thoughts.

Horace also worked in the Post Office and also attended the White sisters meetings, often preaching. He met Grace there and also had lodgings in Ealing, waiting at the underground station to travel in to work with her and one day proposing on the platform at Ealing Broadway. He explained that he had ceaselessly prayed for God to give him guidance and God had told him that he should marry her. My mother felt she had no choice. How could she go against God? She didn't love Horace, in fact she didn't much like him, and she thought that her well-spoken family would probably not like him much either.

She was right, and once they'd married her family started to drift away from her. I was never to meet Dora Rowse or her husband who played in the Alexandra Palace. I met her cousin Ivan by chance more than 50 years later, just before he died. His cousin Sybil, who I'd never even heard of, approached me after the premiere of 'Benedictus' in St. Alban's Cathedral and asked if I had a grandmother called Andrews. She was amazed to learn that I was a musician and composer despite my background. My father had to them been 'beyond the pale' and Grace had had to manage without them.

Horace had grown up in Broadstairs, his father devoting his life solely to God by being the leader of a sect of the Brethren, gaining a meagre living by acting as companion to an old Brethren member. Bible reading began at breakfast when after grace each family member must read a passage from the Bible, passed solemnly around. One also had to invent prayers, which I experienced once or twice and found unbearably embarassing. His wife had given him six children whilst also running their home as a boarding house. A wealthy PB member provided funds to educate the oldest son Harry, who was sent to Simon Langton's in Canterbury, deserted the brethren, studied medicine and became a succesful Harley Street surgeon, later marrying as his second wife a Lady Valerie French, daughter of Field Marshall Sir John French, Baron Ypres - quite a social step upwards!

Horace as second son received no assistance and had only four years of school, but he made the most of it, at the end of his life still able to quote the funeral oration from Julius Caesar, adept at multiplication and division, and able to sight-sing or play hymn tunes using the tonic solfa method. At twelve he started working as a telegram boy earning one farthing each delivered, giving a third of the proceeds to the family. Like all Brethren he was respectful and hard-working and with the help of evening classes took City and Guild exams and gained a position at the telegraph office where he also learnt the Morse-Code.

On outbreak of war he was conscripted by the army but refused. Summonsed to appear in court he explained to the judge that whilst loyal to King and Country his religion forbade him to kill people under any pretext. The judge asked if he would be prepared to work as a non-combatant in the front line but forfeit the protection of carrying a gun. He agreed and was sent off to Ypres in Belgium as a private in the Sappers, detailed to lay cables at the front line. As shells and bullets whistled around him he continually prayed to God to protect him, which He obviously did, since he emerged from the war without a scratch. However, this period did not last too long because when it was discovered that he was good at the Morse-Code he was moved to the interception of enemy messages and proved valuable.

After the war he was taken on by the Central Telegraph Office in London. All his spare time was taken up by preaching and it would appear that Grace was the first woman to whom he proposed. They married in 1927 when they were both thirty, considered quite old to start a family, although it wasn't immediately clear that they wanted to. Horace was monumentally energetic in his work, his self-advancement and his evangelism. They moved to Enfield where a PB member helped them finance the building of a house. Horace commuted to Central London, worked a five and a half day week, took endless evening classes and, in whatever spare time there was, ran an organisation called Brigadier Hall assisted by Grace, a charity for poor London children. They taught them the Bible, fed them tea and buns, organised swimming galas and took them on holidays to Southend and Clacton.

Grace was not permitted to keep her job. She kept house. There was an upright piano used for nothing but Sankey, and a violin locked away because she was forbidden to play it. Her brothers and sisters did sometimes visit but on the whole their life revolved around the Brethren. She was gentle, quiet and very shy and had no idea how to stand up to her husband.

It is possible that I might never have been born at all if it had not been for the interference of my grandmother, then living in Nice. She suggested to a Mademoiselle Peters that she might like to visit London and stay with her daughter and son-in-law in order to learn English. The two women got on famously and my mother followed her suggestion of seeking medical advice. Attention to her Fallopian tubes followed and resulted in the birth of my brother Philip one year later. She was already 38 years old.

My father was thrilled with his first-born and innumerable photos show joy in a face ever-previously solemn, while Philip smiles and laughs and chortles with glee, giving no clue to future worries.

I was born in the general hospital in Enfield three years later on October 28th 1938, becoming the third male Scorpio in the house. Quite a few early photos exist of me too, but the happiness on Philip's face has faded. He is a bystander. He had had three years of total individual adulation and attention, and suddenly it had changed. Where Philip took after his father, I took after my mother. The opposite and opposing natures of the parents were written large in their sons. Where Philip was clever, rational and serious, I was instinctive, irrational and cheerful. I was adored by my mother, Philip was adored by his father. But he was so much like his father that this caused tremendous tension, Horace seeing his own strengths and failures and not wishing to be shown them - rather to correct them. I with my mother was never anything but happy and have no memory of ever once falling out with her. She was so musical, so gentle, so humorous.

In the seventies I developed an interest in astrology, and (without prompting)several astrologers became interested in me and sent readings:

'The nerve stress in your life comes from signals received on the sensitive antenna which at your birth was tuned exactly to a frequency known of old to attract musical composition as a gift.' (Samuel H. Weir, 1976)

'Your astrological chart is aligned at 16 degrees between Taurus and Scorpio which spells out musical ability, and is similar to Mozart's. (T. White, 1977)

'The prints of both active and inactive hands reveal a combination of spiritual beauty and physical charm together with a dedication toward spiritual unfoldment. A great number of lines and signs in combination, inherited from the wisdom of your earthly parents, is bestowed on you for a sure and certain reason. The pre-natal influences are so intensely carved and repeated in former existences that you will find it difficult to trust your inner wisdom, as a veil of shyness and oversensitivity covers the inner glory of your spiritual kingdom.'

'Please stick to the possible refinement, improvement and surely try your best in your line of work with ever-increasing zeal and vitality with a detached viewpoint. Realize that it is God who is doing so even though you may be titled in time as the best composer in the world, but let not your ego be influenced by its superficial aspect because whatever we have is just borrowed from our infinite sources. That is why we should try to play our role to the best of our ability, ever seeking His direction and guidance for the sake of sharing the privilege of being useful to mankind.' (Ghan Shyam Singh Birla 1974)

In Palm Springs in 1994 I was introduced to a Mexican woman with psychic gifts, a companion of John Wayne's. She knew nothing about me at all but after a long time in silence said:

'Your whole life has been shadowed, affected and in some ways determined by sibling rivalry'.

How could she know that?

The second world war broke out before my first birthday and it occurred to my father that living next to the armaments factory in Enfield might not be the safest place. He decided to move his young family a little out of London to Cuffley in Hertfordshire for the duration of the war thinking it wouldn't attract Hitler's bombs. In fact it did attract a few since the Lufwaffe tended to drop leftovers once they had crossed London and wanted to get home fast. We lived at first in a bungalow where in the next door garden a man kept a lion called Winston. My father could not see that having two babies next to a full-grown lion was in any way dangerous, but he was more disturbed when we woke up one morning to find that the fish-and-chip shop opposite had been hit by an incendiary bomb and burnt to the ground.

We moved to a detached house at 82 Tolmers Road, whose owners had left the country for the duration of the war. It had a garden with a pond, a little apple orchard and a nice view across a cabbage field to a railway embankment. Leisa Lovely Cotching, my grandmother as she was now named, came to live with us, her second husband having died and curiously left her penniless. I wondered why? A multitude of expensive trunks and cases went up into the loft, their sides plastered with labels saying Hotel Splendide, Cunard Line, Biarritz and so on - which might have had something to do with it. My father was less than pleased to see her, but I adored her at first sight, with her absurdly youthful brown wig, her cheeks rendered glowing with cochineel, her foxhead-wrap that bit its tail with a silver clasp, and her innumerable stories.

'Why do you have a crooked nose Grandma?'

'I came out of the Negresco one morning, the door of the limousine was opened for me but the chauffeur closed it a little too rapidly and my nose was trapped in the door. I was on my way to a party given by the Admiral in his battleship harboured in Villefranche. We decided to play song-charades - acting out titles of well-known parlour songs for people to guess. I took three coconuts from the dining-room and laid them on the centre of the state-room carpet. Absolutely nobody could guess!'

'What was it, Grandma?'

'Where my caravan has rested'

She would sit at the piano and play and sing:

'...but the clock (rapping on the piano lid) - stopped (rap)- never to go again when the old man died'

..and we would join in:

Fifty years and never stopping, tick-tock, tick-tock Fifty years and never stopping, tick-tock, tick, but the Clock (rap) - stopped (rap)- never to go again when the old man died.

We sat in front of the fire with her and cut out cartoons of Hitler from newspapers, pasting them into a scrap-book:

A parrot is sitting in its cage and a cat on the floor who says:

'I don't mind you purring, but I don't like it when you stop.'

We would listen at night to the purring of buzz-bombs and think the same and one night the purring did stop. The almighty explosion blew out all our windows, cracked the ceilings and made a crater which looked 100-feet deep. In the morning we walked through the cabbage-field to see it and all the village were there. It had landed just beyond the embankment, which had saved us from the blast. My father had obviously been praying again.

I have a clear memory of my mother pushing me in a pram down the hill to the the village and encountering the most glorious smell of bacon wafting across the countryside. We arrived at the grocer shop to find it burnt to a cinder by an incendiary bomb and all the food merrily cooking in the ashes. In the garden we would pick up silver paper streamers and flak from overhead gun battles. We slept under the stairs and presumed that having wars was the normal way that life was lived. Hitler was demonised and we thought he was the Devil. For a long while I believed germs and Germans were the same thing. I had a little flick-book of Hitler with a demon's tail standing on top of the world and as one flicked the world rolled over and crushed him.

My uncle Alec lived in Staffordshire in a tiny village near Cannock Chase and at the height of the blitz Philip and I were sent there to 'keep out of harm's way'. From my point of view this was not entirely true. The first thing he did was push me into a field full of stallions, which frightened the life out of me, although fortunately they didn't attack. Next he locked me into a pigsty on the farm with sows four times my size. I was rescued in the nick of time by Doris the farmer's wife. Back in Cuffley he threw all my toys onto the fire, causing a chimney alarm and calling out the fire brigade. One day we all went for a picnic in Epping Forest where Philip left his favourite toy, a white terrier called Jock, sitting in a tree. In the middle of the night he began to scream and scream for it until at 4 o'clock in the morning my father had no option but to to go back and retrieve it. He also started to suffer from nettle rash - so severe and persistent that sometimes he had to have a nurse. Invited across the road one day to play with some neighbour's children we sat on a big swing chair by a pond. He gave it an almighty push and I fell in, running home dripping wet, contracting double pneumonia and gaining a propensity for chest problems which have stayed to this day. He did not like having a brother and was doing his best to say so.

Moving to a village affected my father in a most surprising way. He changed his religion. I suppose that for one thing the Plymouth Brethren couldn't get to him so easily. Petrol was heavily rationed and journeys were only supposed to be undertaken if vital to the war effort. When I nearly died of bronchial pneumonia there was a great stir when uncle Harry drove up in a magnificent white Riley 12. Surely he shouldn't be driving?

In fact I think Horace was pleased to get away from the brethren. The acquisition of a wireless affected him and he started to want to sing like Richard Tauber, or go to see a show, or do some amateur dramatics. There was a black tin church near us which was pretty 'low'. He enquired about beliefs and was presented with a copy of 'The 39 Articles of the Christian Faith' which he told us were 'sound' and on Sunday afternoon July 4th we were all obliged to get baptized one after the other. I remember feeling that I was too big for it. Getting baptised was for babies and this was embarassing. Whether my mother had any say in the matter I don't know, after all she had given her whole way of life up to commit herself to the Brethren because Horace was a shining light in it and that's why she'd married him. He was moving the goalposts. Later this was to bother my brother a great deal, but for the moment it produced what I could only see as improvements.

A wind-up HMV gramaphone appeared with 'You are my heart's delight' and 'This is my lovely day'. We could play 'The Teddy Bears Picnic', 'The March of the Tin Soldiers' or 'The Rose of Tralee' and all sorts of nursery rhymes. My mother began to play Chopin and Beethoven after we'd gone to bed and we went to the cinema to see the sumptuous story of composer Johann Strauss: 'The Great Waltz' starring Luise Rainer. If ever a film could persuade one that being a composer was glamourous it would have been 'The Great Waltz' and perhaps somewhere this thought entered into my head?

Sixty years later a tiny little lady dressed from head to foot in white was introduced to me by FT ballet-critic Nick Dromgoole. 'I am Luise Rainer and I have come to meet you dressed as 'The Snowman!' she said. She was still acting at the age of 95 having been the only actress in history to win the Oscar for Best Actress two years running. ('The Great Waltz' and 'The Good Earth.')

Childrens' books with pretty covers appeared alongside the Bible and my mother joined a lending library. Horace was trying to make up for a lost life, but despite outwardly accepting a more conventional faith he remained Plymouth Brethren at heart. He was opposed to financial gain, business, mixing with wordly people, success, fame, being clever, showing off, freemasons, astrology, spiritualism, magic, gambling, the stock market, sexual intercourse other than for procreation, intimacy, physical contact between members of the family - convictions which can make life somewhat difficult in the real world.

There was a Kindergarten near our house called Poltimore and my mother took me there to enrol. I was not too co-operative. The headmistress was an old lady with pince-nez glasses. She took them off and handed them to me.

'Take these glasses to that lady over there'

'I won't'

'We know what to do with little boys like that!'

A man came with a puppet theatre and performed 'Jack and the Beanstalk'. The clouds rolled down and Jack appeared to climb up into the sky. I was entranced by the magic of theatre and would remain so.

Although my father had moved away from the Brethren, perhaps he felt he had not moved far enough. As the war neared its end he decided we should move to Brighton, where he had no friends or contacts whatever. We would live 'twixt sea and downs' and he would commute every day on the excellent train service to Victoria. Prices were at rock-bottom and he purchased a run-down terraced house with some bomb damage at 113 Preston Road, of which we would occupy the top two floors. We did not have access to the tiny back garden but across the road was Preston Park which he said would 'make up for it'. There was a somewhat dangerous flat roof with a delapidated railing opening from the stairs on the third floor where one could hang out washing. The house was very noisy, being on the main road to London, backing on to a furniture depository with six lorries and beyond them the railway shunting yards, but as he explained, 'very convenient', since he could walk to the station. My brother and I were enrolled in Ditchling Road Primary School at the top of Stanford Avenue (which later changed its name to The Downs Primary School)and the choir at Saint Augustine's Church a short way up.

At Primary School we were taught folk songs. My girl-friend was Susan Sheen. We would stand up in front of the class and she would sing:

'Oh Soldier, Soldier, won't you marry me with your musket, fife and drum'

with its question-and-answer verses, and I would sing the bitter ending

'Oh no sweet maid I cannot marry thee for I have a wife of my own'.

A song about deception, betrayal and bigamy if one comes to think about it, yet teaching us something about life in such a quiet, gentle and humourous way that it stays in the recesses of the mind. In the sixties such folk songs became a no-go area and much wisdom lost in the process. English folk songs were often 'modal', in the minor with flattened sevenths and major sixths, whereas the scales taught at The Preston School of Music, to which I was soon to go, insisted on flattened sixths and sharpened sevenths, the European system. The English music of the first half of the Twentieth Century cultivated and revelled in this modalism, which permeates the music of Vaughan Williams, Warlock, Finzi, Holst, Delius, Ireland, Moeran and many others. I have never forgotten this and am still an unreformed modal person, not always noticeably, but very strongly if asked to indulge - for instance the film score for 'A Month in the Country'where the period setting of the early twenties and a country church made it irresistible!

Bartholomew Hales ARCO had just taken on the post of organist and choirmaster at Saint Augustine's. He was only 5 feet tall but dignified, brusque and serious. Choirboys practised on Wednesday evenings from 6 to 7, and again on Fridays from 7.15 with contraltos, joined at 8.00 by tenors and basses. My father joined it as a tenor and my brother and I were trebles. We sang everything: Victorian anthems, Elizabethan motets, Purcell, Wesley, Noble in B minor, Stanford in C, Bach, Mendelssohn duets, Bach chorales, Haydn, Morley, Gibbons, Tallis, Stainer, J.B.Dykes (later frowned upon), MacPherson, Parry - Mr. Hales introduced us to the whole range of Anglican music just as if we were singing in one of the great English cathedrals. He had retired from 'the City' we were told, had been assistant organist to George Thalben-Ball at the Temple Church and had also conducted opera at the Scala Theatre. He would never have told us this himself. He gave no encouragement, no praise, nor indeed censure beyond the occasional mild correction. He instructed and rehearsed the choir as necessary, chose the music, played the organ with minimum ostentation, and was in every way reliable, correct and utterly impenetrable.

One day he told us that we were to come to his home on Monday evenings at 7 o'clock for singing lessons. No money was involved. We arrived at his large detached house in leafy Surrenden Avenue, were ushered into the music room by his young wife and there were put through a great variety of vocal exercises and gymnastics: 'Come let us see the sun rise up' (on a rising scale) and 'Now let us see the moon go down' (on a falling scale). We sang scales to 'Naw,naw' and 'Nah, nah' and 'Nee,nee'. We were taught breath control by taking in a huge breath and attempting to sing a whole verse of Crimond (the 23rd psalm) in one breath. I became so expert at this that later I could sing two whole verses in one breath and when at 14 I was entered for the long plunge event at the Grammar School swimming gala, I floated miraculously for 3 minutes under water hitting the other end of the pool and becoming the all-time winner of the event- the only sporting achievement of my life. After the exercises we were taught arias: Handel's 'Art thou troubled', Bach's 'Let the bright seraphim', Mendelssohn's exquisite duet 'I waited for the Lord' which I sang with Philip. We became the leaders of the choir (Cantoris and Decani) often performing at weddings on Saturdays for a shilling, or two and sixpence if we sang a solo. The favourite solo was 'Love one another with a pure heart fervently'.

The organ at St Augustine's was unusually fine. It had only just been built and installed at a cost of £32,000- a 3-manual Morgan and Smith with 60 speaking stops, a simulated 32' pedal stop which made us shake, tab stops, manual and pedal pistons with couplers, a solo tromba of resplendent power, and a Choir Organ Salicional of exquisite delicacy. I was in awe of this great machine operated with such deadpan disinterest by the diminutive maestro. At the age of about 12 I summoned up courage to ask if I could try to play it:

'After choir practise on Friday'.

No surprise, no reaction, no expression.

He taught me the organ. Again no money was involved. Left hand with right hand together; left hand and right foot together; right hand, right and left foot together; all together. We set about the works of J.S. Bach, the organ sonatas of Mendelssohn, and the chorales of Cesar Franck. I worked and worked at this chorale in the hope of causing a reaction. I was amazed at my own temerity for daring to take on such a bravura work and thought at the least I would be reprimanded for overstepping my years. We got to the mighty ending with the pedals in octaves and full organ lifting the roof off, the extreme silence you experience after extreme loudness. A slightly longer pause than usual.

'What else have you been working at?'

I never knew if he thought I was any good or not, but I became his assistant and was allowed to play first of all for funerals, then weddings, then communion services and finally for all the services when he was on holiday.

He died at the age of 96, nearly 30 years later, still playing the organ, but now at St John's. His wife phoned me to ask if I would make the funeral oration which he had requested.

'He thought the world of you, you know'.

I felt bewildered and ashamed, for I had hardly seen or spoken to him in all those years; just sometimes we would have a few words when he passed my parents' house in Knoyle Road, and one day he'd given me his own ancient,treasured copy of Stainer and Barrett's 'Dictionary of Musical terms'. I prepared my oration and arrived to find the big church full to overflowing with dark-suited, impressive-looking business men, none of whom I knew. Where had they all come from for a retired man of 96? I mounted the pulpit, stared at the sea of faces and told them that Mr.Hales had taught me everything about singing and everything about organ-playing and sacred music. He had never requested or taken payment or thanks. I was deeply indebted to him and yet I regretted to say that I had never had the remotest idea what he thought or felt about anything. I recalled the most profound tragedy that he had suffered, when his 12-year old daughter,Daphne, so delicate and pretty, was taken ill and died suddenly. I'd tried to find a moment to express my grief - yet I could not find a way of doing it. As everything else, he brushed it aside. Choir practises continued as normal, anthems annouced, hymns listed. The little man remained dignified and impassive. As I left the church one of the tall, dark-suited ones addressed me.

'We are very grateful to you for your address- you gave a perfect description of a mason of the highest degree.'

My bedroom in 113 Preston Road was about 3ft.6ins. wide and should have been the kitchen. It was separated from the living room by an asbestos partition-wall on the other side of which was the piano. After I had gone to bed, my mother, with an enthusiasm enhanced by nearly twenty years of denial, would delve into her repertoire of piano music learnt in the early years of the century. My ear was next to the sound board and the volume was non-adjustable and loud. I listened to Beethoven's first Sonata in F minor, to 'The Moonlight', to Rachmaninov's C sharp minor Prelude, Tchaikovsky's 'Chants sans paroles', Rubinstein's 'Melody in F' and many of the Chopin Waltzes. The one I loved most was the A minor with the tune in the left hand. I was six and I wanted to play it more than anything in the world. Amongst aging volumes of sheet music in the piano stool I found 'Ezra Read's Piano Tutor' with a diagram of a keyboard and all the notes labelled. I tried at first to play it by ear but couldn't find the right pitch. It struck me that if I could write note names onto the piano with indelible pencil and then write them into the Chopin waltz, it ought to enable me to play it. It did, although the pencil markings were not exactly welcomed. However, from the beginning I began to play music both by ear and by sight-reading and from the beginning I realised that it was possible to write down notes that turned into music.

I asked if I could have lessons, which my father initially resisted, but a year later my mother took me four doors along the road to a house with an enormous ancient sign spelling out 'Preston School of Music' in faded gilt lettering where I met Mr Bonney Churcher ARCO in wing-collar, cravat with gold pin and waistcoat with watch and chain, a character straight out of Dickens. I was one of a stream of children exhorted to play scales with the correct fingering, to keep strict time and to work as hard as possible for the next exam. Lessons were 1s 3d for half an hour or 2s 6d for an hour and although I enjoyed them I never got to like the scales. In fact neither of us seemed to enjoy the piano practise side of things very much and I later realised that Bonney Churcher was more an organist than a pianist. Perhaps because of this my piano playing got off to a fairly slow start from a technical point of view.

'If only you would practise, you could end up playing the organ in Saint Paul's Cathedral' he would say to me, this being the highest form of musical attainment he could think of. He was wonderfully cheery and kind-hearted and really meant this, but I exasperated him terribly because from the beginning he would put a new piece in front of me and I would tend to read it straight away, so that when I came for the next lesson he couldn't tell whether I had practised or not.

I loved to sight-read music and I loved to improvise, mostly in the key of D and I started to write down short songs and piano pieces, first on birthday or Christmas cards for the family and then for myself to play. Aged about 11 and for no perticular reason that I remember I wrote out a lengthy 'March in D Major'. It had minor secondary subjects, elaborated recapitulations and a triumphant finale with a running bass line in octaves. I cautiously took this in to show my Mr. Churcher and he got very red in the face and puffed a lot and asked me if I had really written it:

'You mustn't lie to me sonny'

At this moment an adult lady pupil arrived and he demanded that I play the march again to both of them.

'Well, well sonny! We're going to have to learn harmony and correct progressions of the parts, and then counterpoint and perhaps even fugue!'

Suddenly he was excited about teaching me and I was thrilled at the thought of learning. He ordered a textbook, Percy Buck's 'Practical Harmony', and was as good as his word. We worked through 6/4 chords, suspensions, plagal and interrupted cadences, the Neapolitan sixth, the diminished seventh, the grammar of classical music. Later he produced his own Morocco-bound counterpoint textbook which he'd used as a student, probably as far back as the 1890s, and we worked through that as well- 1st species, 2nd species, 3rd, 4th and 5th, then canon and free, three-part counterpoint, moving finally to fugue and its complexities of subject and coutersubject, augmentation and diminution, pedal and stretto. He taught me for about five years and it is to him I owe my knowledge of harmony and counterpoint, instilled between the ages of 11 and 16. One day in 1954 he asked me to visit him and he was suddenly thin and pale and very grey. He presented me with a much-cherished volume of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues - his most prize possession.

'Please, please work at it sonny, and you'll end up playing at Saint Paul's'.

But in mid-sentence he was seized by some appalling inner pain and couldn't continue. I left clutching the big book, which I still keep beside the piano, not realising that I wouldn't see him again.

The teacher in our fourth year at junior school was the stunningly charismatic figure of Dickie Webb - pedagogue extraordinary, sometime playwright, Shakespearian actor, RAF hero, centre-forward for Southampton, poet, raconteur and form-teacher. In a grey and depressed post-war Britain of rationing, pre-fabs, and dowdy clothes, he would appear in brilliant Fairisle sweaters, loud check suits, yellow waistcoats and deafening ties. He wrote us a play in Iambic pentameters, explaining blank verse and why the Bard had used it. The play was about The Globe and I was Burbage, singing 'Greensleeves' to lyrics of his own making:

'The masque is o'er, the play is done...'

All had parts suiting their own characters and this little production caused some attention, gaining a Sussex youth theatre award; he gave us football trials and coached us as if professional, winning the trophy for best Sussex school team; he divided us into groups and we built puppet theatres, writing our own plays for them; he divided us into futher groups and we created newspapers; we were asked to invent languages and invent new vocabulary; we were encouraged to speak up for ourselves; to sign our names with a flourish; to write elegant letters; develop good manners; to reach out in every. R.D.Webb believed in self-expression, creativity and freedom. My mother asked him if I was doing all right and he said:'The sky's the limit!' in a voice that would have kept Sir Donald Wolfit in obscurity. There was not one of us who would not have laid down his or her life for him had he but twitched one well-manicured finger.

One hour every week we sat in a radio room and listened to 'Adventures in Music' from the BBC, presente with the sound of a symphony orchestra for the first time. We were given glossy booklets with pictures of living composers: Richard Strauss who'd composed 'Till Eulenspiegel and his merry pranks' and was shortly coming to London to conduct it; Sibelius who lived in isolation in the forests of Finland and had written seven great symphonies; and Benjamin Britten who had just written an opera called 'The Little Sweep' which Norman del Mar was coming to Brighton's Theatre Royal to conduct and we were to be taken to see - for nothing! Mr.Webb arrived one morning laden with government-supplied music scores and taught us the songs so that we could join in and be part of it. It was something new and quirky with funny crushed notes and extra beats. We were living in an wonderful welfare-state of free Song and Dance, Imagination and Inspiration!

The bronchial pneumonia I'd sufferred since my ducking at the age of four still caused me trouble and I was often ill and confined to bed, sometimes missing important steps in my education. At home I would make imaginary towns amongst the bed-clothes, model plasticine and draw and paint. Fifty years later memories of this jogged back into mind when I read Robert Louis Stevenson's 'A Child's Garden of Verses', the result being 'The Land of Counterpane'.

The school had a visit one day from a talent-spotter from Brighton Art College and I was picked out for a scholarship - surprisingly not for acting or music but for painting. I went once on a Saturday morning and made an oil painting of whales and whalers but was taken ill and it was decided that I was doing too much and wouldn't return. Perhaps if I had I would have become an artist rather than a musician. Many years later,in 2002, I applied for membership of The Chelsea Arts Club citing as qualifications my OBE for services to music, 600 musical works and Groves Dictionary's remark that I had succeeded as composer, conductor and pianist.

'But you are not an artist.'

'Isn't a musician an artist?'

'No, you have to prove that you can draw.'

I took along a pencil portrait of Diahann and membership was granted to me as a graphic artist!

This idyllic year came to an end with the 11-plus exam. Many of our A-stream passed it, but because our house was on the west side of the London Road, I was sent to Brighton Hove and Sussex Grammar School for boys, up the hill on the Dyke Road, whilst all my friends went to Varndean, up the hill on the other side. Philip had already been there for 3 years and was outstandingly succesful academically, coming top of the A-stream in all subjects and having to suffer shouts of 'swot' every morning. It was considered to be a very good school, having only recently stopped being a private-school when Attlee's socialist government nationalised it.

The somewhat forbidding-looking black-gowned masters of BGS knew nothing of glorious Dickie Webb and his boundless enthusiasm for the individual soul. They believed more in tradition, discipline, law and order, the armed services and above all in games of the team variety. The much-admired motto of the school was (and is): 'Absque labore nihil' (Nothing without work). They had no school orchestra and a single music master, Albert Chapman. There was however a 20-minute gramaphone recital of popular classics every Monday morning after prayers, an annual inter-house music competition and one visit by professional musicians. I clearly remember The McNaghten String Quartet playing Debussy and Kodaly - a luscious introduction to the string quartet that hooked me for life.

On my first Wednesday at BGS Albert Chapman took us for class music and asked if any of us sang in a choir. He explained that there was a well-established tradition of a yearly performance of Gilbert and Sullivan opera and we were to audition.

The Misses Guille, two ladies from Guernsey who had occupied the ground floor of our house for the duration of the war had finally returned home and this had meant that I had been moved to a big attic room on my own where no one could hear me. Taking advantage of this I used to sing scales just for fun, trying to go higher and higher every night. It amused me to see just how high I could go.

When my turn came to sing a scale for the audition I first sang a scale from middle C, then D, then E, F, G.

'Can you go higher?'

'Yes'.

A flat, A natural, B flat and finally a scale up to the top C as in the Allegri Miserere.

'Have you had singing lessons?'

'Yes'.

'Have you done any acting?'

'Yes'

'Would you like to audition for the lead part in the opera this term?'

'Yes'.

The opera was 'Ruddigore', and the following evening I attended the first opera rehearsal amongst boys who seemed to be twice as big as me. I was 4 feet 9inches high. I sight-read the songs and got the part. Never, in all the musical achievements of my life, have I been so elated as that evening of my first week in senior school. For seven years I was to walk to school up and down a dark, steep hill alongside the railway - small terraced houses on one side and a concrete wall on the other. It was extremely ugly, but on the night I became an operatic soprano Dyke Road Drive was a place of wonder and delight as I sang and ran my way to the bottom.

I had no idea that I was replacing anyone else - no idea that an older boy was mortified and immediately moved from the school by furious parents. I had no inkling at all of how much being talented can hurt people.

I played the part of Rose Maybud whilst Robin Oakapple was Johnnie Lee, son of the entertainer Vernon Lee, whose picture hung in the National Portrait Gallery. The show attracted the attention of the press:

'As Rose Maybud, 11-year old H.D.Blake gave a remarkable performance for a boy of his age. He started with the natural advantage of a sweet soprano voice, and the fun he extracted from the maiden's etiquette book was delightful. The droll effect of the duets between Robin and May Rosebud were heightened by a difference of more than a head and shoulders between them.'

Walking home after a performance I was caught up by one of the orchestra, a violinist called Jack Millard, who shared the same walk home. When I told him that I played the piano and could sight-read he asked if I'd like to play trios one day - his friend John was lead cellist in the Sadler's Wells Opera Orchestra. I was most impressed by this and couldn't wait to try it. My mother agreed to my going over and I arrived at his parents ramshackle old house near Preston Park Station. We embarked on Hummel and the sound of violin, cello and piano was just marvellous. It was my first experience of chamber music and I found that I could hold my own with two grown-up professionals. To me this was revelatory.

Suddenly into the room swept an imposing middle-aged lady dressed all in black who stopped us in our tracks:

'What on earth are you doing playing my trios with a small boy?!'

'He plays very well Mother, just listen.'

'I have no intention of listening to a small boy usurping my position in The Millard Piano Trio!'

My discovery of the joy of chamber music had been short-lived, but the sound of it had entered my soul for ever. The first work I was to have published was Fantasy-allegro for piano trio

There had been a third contender for my role in 'Ruddigore':

'Shaw's Mad Margaret was another succesful example of casting. There was an Ophelia-like poignancy about the mad girl scenes followed by the extraordinary contrast of diverting comedy with Sir Despard Murgatroyd'

David Shaw was not removed from the school by his family for failing to gain the lead part, but became a friend and a great musical influence on me. He was a year older and very tall and thin. He could play the organ and improvise fluently on the piano and had been brought up with the idea of theatre and opera, his father being a passionate performer of Gilbert and Sullivan, president of the local society devoted to it. The family owned a department store in Hove and they lived in a fine detached house off the Dyke Road with a TV, radiogram and grand piano. Shaw was 'musical' and was 'going to be a musician'. I was in awe at the enormity of such an ambition having recently seen the film 'Prelude to Fame' with Jeremy Spencer, about an uneducated 9-year old Italian peasant boy destined to be a great conductor.

One day he wanders from the farmyard into the garden of Toscanini's palatial house and hears orchestral music for the first time, the first movement of Beethoven's 5th that is playing on the gramaphone. In a trance he walks up to the glistening Steinway, sits down and with just the hint of a frown reaches out instinctively and plays back the whole thing back by ear. I left the cinema realising that however much I might like music I'd never be that good and when eventually I became a professional musician it was to my own considerable surprise.

'The camera never lies' they used to say in those innocent days.

Music was just my hobby, but I started spending a lot of my free time on it, playing piano duets with Shaw every Saturday for example. First, things like Arthur Benjamin's 'Jamaican Rhumba' or Walton's 'Popular Song' from 'Facade'; then arrangements of orchestral works like Elgar's 'Enigma Variations' and overtures and symphonies by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. A year or two later Shaw's grandmother died, bequeathing a larger house and another piano, which opened up further possibilities. He acquired a two-piano version of Brahms' 2nd Symphony, Rachmaninov's gorgeous Suite opus 17, works by Ravel and Faure, Mahler and Stravinsky. He also bought records and played them to me to guess the composer. I was quite good at this because I listened endlessly to the radio, but I remember that it was he that introduced me to Delius's 'On hearing the first cuckoo in Spring', a music of the sort of Englishness that gives one an eternal yearning for trees and water and the countryside. Soon afterwards Bartholomew Hales took me to hear none other than Sir Thomas Beecham conducting it in the Dome, sitting down and audibly swearing at the orchestra, who seemed to love it - and him. I was so smitten with the piece that I transcribed the score for piano and twenty years later it would influence me to buy a fabulously picturesque water mill, where I would constantly suffer from colds and bronchitis, a problem that would never occur to one when listening to such ineffable music.

We were spoilt by the quality of artists visiting our town. Shaw's father was also a member of the Brighton Philharmonic Society and his card permitted us to creep into Herbert Menges' Sunday morning rehearsals to see soloists like Solomon, Cherkassky, Myra Hess or Curzon, singers like Schwarzkopf, or cellists like Tortelier, whilst the marvellously-informed Shaw would keep up a running commentary with endless ironic asides that would keep me spellbound by their effrontery. Once, via the school, we were allowed into a rehearsal of 'The Marriage of Figaro' at Glyndebourne which was to hook Shaw on serious opera for life. After Oxford he was taken on by Covent Garden Opera and groomed as repetiteur and assistant conductor, once directing a performance of 'Clemenza di Tito' there before leaving to live in Italy and work in Ulm and then Bayreuth. I was never attracted to opera in the way he was, and gradually our tastes and opinions on music diverged. To me the most profound music of the great composers is found in their string quartets and chamber and instrumental music, in their symphonies and choral-orchestral works. When one writes for theatre, the music serves a different master, getting characters on and off the stage, whipping up the excitements of marriage and betrothal, victory and war, betrayal and violence, politics and death - nearer the extrovert world of Hollywood and glamour than the inner world of the spirit.

1951 was the year of The Festival of Britain and to celebrate this the school put on Edward German's mock-Tudor operetta 'Merrie England', which contains a showy coloratura part for soprano - Bessie Throckmorton. Apart from several top B flats it contains a cadenza covering a range from G below middle C to high F, 3 octaves above. On auditioning for the part, and probably due to endless high-note practising in the attic, I found I could do this cadenza and got the job. At the first performance the somewhat conservative Head of Junior School, Mr.Milton, asked what note I was singing and when I told him declared it 'unnatural' and got quite upset:

'Boys do not sing up to that pitch. It's unheard of!'

But there it was, and at a time when Amy Camus called herself Yma Sumac and had a popular success with 'Hymn to the Sun God' which extended over 4 octaves, I was unabashed. Perhaps Mr. Milton did have a point because on the third night performance the top F for some reason didn't sound and I was left alone at centre stage in total silence wondering what I should do. Had my voice suddenly broken because of strain? Albert Chapman thought not and started the orchestra off again from the top. This time all the notes came out - rapturous applause.

Synchronicity is Jung's word for the occasion of coincidence where the chance of that coincidence occurring is higher than the reasonable odds. A lady named Violet Whitley, well-bred but of what used to be called 'reduced circumstances', had rented our basement flat and had realised that I had an unsatiable thirst for music (it would have been difficult not to since the piano stood directly over her head!) One day she called me down to the basement.

'I have some old books you might like'.

A large pile of heavy but beautifully-bound volumes were stacked just inside the door. The first one contained the complete works of Chopin in different editions, bound together. The next contained a Leipzig edition of all the Beethoven sonatas, the third Greig and Debussy, the fourth Bach - and so on. Perhaps she had studied piano in Leipzig before the First World War. The books were signed by a Violet Beaumont, which might have been her maiden name, but she was unforthcoming about their origin. A chance remark about Clement Attlee intensified the mystery.

'He went to Harrow. He's my cousin'.

I welcomed these books with open arms and consumed them from cover to cover. For me it was a miraculous gift, a treasure trove, since there would have been no way that I could have afforded such a marvellous library, or have even persuaded anybody for my need to have one.

The town of Brighton was bursting with music for all to hear. Military bands played at the bandstands on the promenade; trios of violin, cello and piano played in palm-court lounges and pier tearooms- 'Chanson de Matin' and 'Salut d'Amour' of Elgar, 'The Wedding of the Painted Doll', 'Valse Triste' by Sibelius, 'In the Shadows' by Herrmann Finck - the standard repertoire of light music, often written by the greatest of composers; a wonderful ancient harp and violin duo echoed through The Lanes; in cinemas there were Wurlitzer organs that came up on lifts between feature films played by men in pink dinner jackets. At the Regent Dance-Hall was Syd Dean's All-Star Big Band. Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet would come to the Hippodrome every year and the Carl Rosa Opera would come to the Essoldo.

Some evenings my mother played second violin in the scratch Kingscliffe Light Orchestra, which Shaw and I found hilarious. Mr Whitcombe the conductor would lose interest at times and lose his place, whereupon the leader Madame Pordes would become furious and stamp her foot. Clem Rosling the clowning percussionist would add unwanted motor horn parps to wake him up and in difficult string passages the volume of sound would curiously diminish as the less confident players made sure their bows didn't touch the strings. George Moore would play the Trumpet Voluntary and go a brilliant shade of scarlet and Major Keen would triumph over his handlebar moustache and play an oboe solo. Sometimes I had to control my merriment and would be asked to sing a solo: -Handel's 'Art thou troubled?' or Bach's 'Let the bright seraphim' or perhaps something lighter like 'Count your blessings one by one.'

The third soprano role of my short singing career was also the most fun- Josephine the captain's daughter in 'HMS Pinafore'- with David Shaw as Buttercup and a marvellous singing discovery for Ralph Rackstraw in the person of John Mason, later changing his name to Ralph Mason and later becoming principal tenor of the D'Oyle Carte Opera, Freddie in 'My Fair Lady' at Drury Lane and a star of The Welsh National Opera. Although we were the same age in 1952, his voice had broken and mine hadn't.

'Jolly' Jack Smithies was our third-form master and dismissive of G & S, plunging us straight into T.S.Eliot and Alfred J.Prufrock:

'Let us go then you and I When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table'

I found it funny but somehow shocking, not reverent enough, as Robert Graves warns in 'The White Goddess':

'Skilful parody of a poem upsets its dignity,sometimes permanently as in the case of the school-anthology poems parodied by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland.'

I was prepared to believe Eliot to be a great poet on one line of surpassing beauty:

'Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song.'

but then I found this to have been by Spenser and thought this to be an outrageous plagiarism. All Eliot's poetry pokes fun at other poets, rather as jazz musicians quote and trivialise snippets of the classics - out of something between admiration and envy.

I felt rather the same about Britten, that he satirised the melodies of others being unable to achieve his own and Jack Smithies was curiously also smitten by Britten. He insisted I accompany him to the first London performance of 'Noye's Fludde' in Southwark Cathedral, conducted by the composer. I was thrilled by the arrangement of the Victorian hymn-tune 'Eternal Father strong to save' but the rest left little impression.

He also introduced us to Proust in the famous English translation which I thought was 'the real Macoy' and attempted a short story in the same style. Unbelievably the wonderful BBC Third Programme at that time broadcast the whole of 'A la recherche du temps perdu' dramatised with the greatest living actors and this made a huge impression.

My brother was brilliant in many ways. He mastered the skills of Meccano and when shown a Bren gun in the school cadet force came home and created a prototype that he claimed could fire more bullets per minute. When we played Monopoly he created his own game called 'Managing Director' with dice, instructions, stocks and shares and boards, in all innocence sending it off to a leading games manufacturer who manufactured it as their own invention. When introduced to model-making he created an extraordinary 'Flying Wing' which we watched him fly in the park. When I had an interest in puppet theatres he made one out of Meccano, writing a perfectly-construed verse play about National Savings Certificates for us to perform. When we visited London he decided that the traffic was badly-organised and drew up a comprehensive road reconstruction plan. He had a tremendous gift for languages, the Latin master making the astonishing claim that he had not made a single error until the 4th year. He naturally gained a first class A-level in it as well as in French and German, later adding Italian, Spanish and other languages including Arabic and Hebrew which he read at Oxford. He enjoyed scouting and cadets, was a good runner, a good swimmer, and an excellent fast bowler though never being asked to join a team. For some reason he was always alone and I don't remember any friend ever coming to the house to play with him. I don't remember a girl friend of any sort either, although I know he would have liked one, at one point taking a course of dance classes at Arthur Murray's in the the hope that this would improve his chances. On the day that I first set off for the Grammar School I asked if he would walk with me. I was really nervous about going there, but he refused, and for 7 years I walked up and down the hill alone.

Something was wrong, either with him or with the school. Although for a while we sang together in the choir and he would sometimes help me with my homework, we never went on holiday together and rarely played together. The relationship with our father deteriorated and at 16 there was a regular fight-fixture every Sunday lunch-time ending in screams, tears and locked doors. Philip accused my father of betraying his beliefs and I suppose he was right. My father, though professing to be C of E was still steeped in Brethren ideology. He hadn't counted on his children entering into the spirit of England to the extent of inventing machine guns and capitalist trickery-games. He didn't believe in any of that.

'So why do you pretend to be C of E if you don't believe it?' my brother would ask him, and this would drive him to a fury. The answer really was that Horace now preferred normal life, loved singing anthems in the choir, loved painting and amateur dramatics and loved having joined the mass of society after 42 years of being thought 'peculiar'!

In the way of so many of us he was convinced that whatever he believed at any given moment was right, and he could always back up his current attitudes with biblical verses to support them. His knowledge of the Bible was encyclopaedic. He would say of our mother:

'Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies' (Proverbs 31.10),

and Philip would say

'Well why don't you ever buy her a birthday present?'

and a row would start, always with,

'Honour thy father and mother..' coming in somewhere.

It is true my father never did buy her anything and all her clothes were hand-me-downs from her sisters. It wasn't that he couldn't afford things since he had a well-paid job, but all smooth things were 'vanity'.

'Vanity, vanity, all is vanity' he would proclaim and go and buy himself a new set of paints.

Philip's problems were about belief. He believed in Christianity and believed that he should 'honour his father' - but unfortunately found that he didn't agree with him. If anything he believed in what his father had believed in when he was born, and this belief system was still in full operation in the person of our mother. Honouring her husband she had accepted his professed new outlooks without believing in them. She attended Saint Augustine's as we all did, but, as she told me years later, there were many ideas she found hard to accept, going to war certainly being one of them. She said:

'I think God will be pleased that I worship Him even if I'm in the wrong place.' A typically gentle view tinged with humour.

She'd leave out the bits of the creed she couldn't quite believe in and omit occasional lines from Hymns Ancient and Modern such as '..they die forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day..'

'No, I don't believe that. I leave it out.'

Horace had 'fled to the fleshpots of Gomorrah' (Brighton that is) to escape the PB, but it hadn't entirely succeeded. Constance White had insisted on coming down from Ealing ever since we moved. She enrolled Philip and I as members of the Scripture Union, whose bible-reading booklets arrived by post like clockwork every month and we had little SU badges shaped like shields that we were supposed to wear. Grace read to us separately every night without fail, the choice of verses undoubtedly guiding us toward the Brethren view. Of Horace's sisters, Edie was 'closed' PB and she would visit armed with tracts. She would write:

'I arrive at ten o'clock on Thursday d.v.'(=God willing).

Bess on the other hand had converted to The Church of Christ Scientist. With extraordinarily bad timing she made her only visit when I had succumbed to another bout of bronchial pneumonia with complications. I had a temperature of 106F and I could only see her 'as through a glass darkly'.

'Get up! There is no such thing as illness, it is all in the mind'.

I got out of bed and promptly passed out and when I came to: 'Lo she had departed from thence'.

Bess's twin sister Daisy now lived dangerously within striking distance of us in Worthing and without exactly leaving the PB was incorporating within her soul an amalgam of Church of Elim, Seventh-Day Adventism, Pentecostalism, Speaking with Tongues and other things 'of which we know not'. She worshipped at 'the tabernacle', loved talking more than anything in the world and started to find an avid listener in her nephew, because Philip had 'put away childish things' and his whole life had become suddenly empassioned by a search for religious meaning. He desperately needed to talk and find answers to theological questions. He had started quite correctly by talking to our own Vicar, but as I discovered later, talking about theology is not really what the Church of England does - more about playing a straight bat and taking cold showers. The vicar had found him pretty heavy going and passed him on to the Bishop of Brighton. From there he had made contact with a homosexual Jewish curate who introduced him to the Jewish-Christian Movement. I may have inadvertently contributed to this interest, in that, being already a great book-reader, I had noticed the publication of 'The Bible as History' by Hugh Schofield and bought it for Philip as a birthday-present. He had swallowed it whole and started to develop the view that the first Christians were the only true Christians, although this presented all sorts of problems because Jesus had preached Christianity as a religion for Gentiles and had been crucified for it - to name but one.

In early 1953 he started a Scripture Union group in the school and exhorted me to join it. Since he'd never asked me to join him in anything at all before I felt it was the least I could do and I put on my SU badge and walked around trying to look serious. Nobody commented on this since I suppose it was so intensely embarassing - well it certainly was to me.

Whereas up to that time inhouse word-fights had been largely restricted to Sunday lunch, they now started to invade weekdays. An ominous development was the locked door with Philip and my father on the inside. There was no escape and their voices got louder and angrier, and more extreme. The subects were eschatology and chiliasm, the Second Coming and The Book of Revelation, a compilation of overheated mysticism that over centuries has been the breaking-point for so many people of fervent conviction.

To be fair to my father he was going through a bad time at work. He was 56 and assistant manager of Shaftesbury Avenue telephone exchange. He had worked extremely hard all his life and wanted to be the manager, but he had started at a considerable disadvantage without an education and it had taken him too long. He was being passed over and the job was looking as if it would go to a keen young chap from a public school. This did not please him.

Philip was about to start his last year at school when he announced to his father that he was a Conscientious Objector. Three days later he imparted this information to the headmaster, Harry Brogden, as well. It would mean that he would cease to belong to the CCF in which he had been a thoroughly efficient sergeant and that he would oppose doing National Service, which was still in operation. Brogden would have seen it as a black mark for the school and himself - letting the side down.

My father and his eldest son argued and pressure was put on Philip from all sides because on 12th September he saw Brogden again to say that he had changed his mind. On the morning of 13th he took a Sunday School class at Saint Augustine's but a walk that he had organised for that afternoon was taken over by my father and his Scripture Union class planned for Monday 14th at the school was cancelled. On Tuesday 15th all seemed quiet. I came home from school about 5 and was doing some homework. Philip was in his room and mother was preparing for Horace's return from London by setting out his normal evening meal. He returned at 6.45 as usual and asked where Philip was. We said he was in his room but it turned out that he wasn't, so I went looking for him. He was just outside the door on the flat roof leaning against the house wall and I said Dad was looking for him. He didn't reply and I said it again, with the same result. That made me a bit worried and I went downstairs. My father went up to see if he was all right and came down after a few minutes asking if we would help 'bring him in'. We asked why and he said Philip was acting very strangely and refused to move. We didn't understand this but we did know that the flat roof was a dangerous place with a sheer 30-foot drop down onto concrete steps. Mother and I followed my father back up there and he said:

'You must come in Philip'.

He said nothing and we stood there. So my father took hold of him to move him and he resisted.

'Help me' he said - and so my mother and I did. He was like a dead weight and I suppose my father was thinking he was going to jump off, though I'm sure he wasn't. He had had enough and wanted to be left alone. But how were we to know? Somehow we manhandled him into the house and down one flight to his bedroom, my heart beating with terrible misgivings. When we got there he collapsed onto the bed as if unconscious.

He remained in a state of catyleptic trance for three days. His eyes were open but he did not speak or move, although I learnt later that he could hear everything we said. The doctor came to look at him, then a psychiatrist or two, then Mr.Combridge who ran The Crusaders, then the vicar and the curate and a couple of teachers. I suppose they found it rather exciting. They said that he was in a catyleptic trance and must be moved to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. They said my father must sign a form giving his permission, which he did, in effect declaring him insane. Mother and I did not agree. We said that his father had been bullying him for days on end and that he should just be left alone and he would recover, but nobody listened or took any notice of us at all.

The day after it happened mother asked me if I would tell the headmaster what had happened and after prayers I knocked on his study door. I did my best to explain but collapsed sobbing, which made him furious. It wasn't much of a job to have to do and I would have rather been anywhere else in the world than in front of this cocky little man who told me to 'pull myself together'. He became an enemy. Ater all it was he who had caused my brother's nervous breakdown by pressuring him to say that he would fight in wars, which he didn't actually believe in - after all who would? Harry Brogden had fought nowhere in his whole life and had spent the war blithely teaching small children Religious Instruction in the Stafforshire countryside.

On the 18th Philip was up and well enough to go for a 5-mile walk with both parents, but the shrinks had got their hooks into him and later that day he was taken away in an ambulance. He was sent first to the general hospital in Brighton and later to Hurstwood Park, part of Saint Francis Hospital, Haywards Heath, a mental hospital. Once away from my father he recovered rapidly, but they wouldn't let him leave.

On 26th September Uncle Harry came down and had lunch with my father, but who knows what he told him. It didn't set Philip free.

On 5th October he made his own bid for freedom and headed for London on foot, but he was picked up on the road by police and taken back, and to make sure he didn't 'escape' again, locked in a padded cell. He was effectively imprisoned and still there was nothing that mother and I could do. It got worse. They decided to give him electric shock treatment- jolt his brain back to normal - as if there is such a thing. How could they know about Philip and his brilliant mind, or the lethal cocktail of charm and fanaticism that fuelled my father's brain? They neither inquired nor cared.

Electric shock therapy of this sort is now discredited, but 1953 was the hot time for it, with the cold war warming up and the MK-Ultra project in full swing.

A year later the director of this funny-farm played chess with Philip who soundly beat him. He told us that as far as he could see there was nothing at all the matter with him and remarked on his high level of intelligence.

'He shouldn't have come here at all' he said, but by then it was far too late.

Everything changed. Not rapidly but bit by bit, like water dripping on stone. You don't notice you've changed but you have.

Philip was never the same. He had always been a loner, but then a lot of this was because of being so clever, which cut him off from people or made them foolishly envy him.

I determined not to be clever, or if I was, to conceal it.

He never really came back home. The funny-farm advised him not to. I lost my only brother and the house felt empty without him. He seemed to blame me to some extent for his collapse and this made me sadder than anything else, since I couldn't understand why he should think it. For a while he stayed with the Webbs, who were very kind to him, but staggeringly was then called up for National Service. A year after the authorities had had him declared insane they were putting him into uniform as an A1 specimen of young manhood. My confidence in these authorities dropped below zero, and so did Philip's. He passed the officer training exam with more than top marks. He was given a rating of 'genius' and asked one or two questions:

'What are your politics?'

'Communist'

'What are your views on war?'

'Pacifist.'

We had been brought up to tell the truth and he spent two years peeling potatoes on Salisbury Plain. I determined to try and say what was expected and keep my own truths to myself. I had seen that neither my mother or my brother could stand up to my father, because he always convinced you he was right. I was the younger brother and had seen that my father in fact was wrong. I held an advantage therefore which Philip had not possessed and I learnt to defeat my father by turning his dogmas round on him.

'God will punish you'

'Not as much as he'll punish you'

This tended to throw him off-balance and gradually he stopped victimising me with this sort of Calvinist garbage.

I think the worst effect for me was a total loss of belief in institutions: the church; doctors and hospitals; teachers, schools and universities; Freudian psychiatrists; families and relatives and so-called friends. I had seen them in action when there was a crisis and they had failed.

Mother was constantly visiting Philip in the hospital and finding it difficult to look after Grandma Cotching as well. I sat with her quite a lot which I liked, but Horace had found an excuse for her to go and on 17th October he persuaded mother to take her into a nursing home. Sometimes she managed to visit us after that, but they'd taken away her nice brown wig and her make-up and she didn't like to be seen without them. She died on November 8th the following year and I wasn't invited to the funeral, because my father thought 'children shouldn't go to funerals'.

I wish I had been there to pay my respects, I had been so fond of her.

Philip came home at Christmas and went to a midnight mass with mother and father. I didn't want to go and stayed at home trying to write a chorale prelude for organ on 'What child is this?', that is to say 'Greensleeves'. I hadn't lost interest in the organ or music but I no longer wanted to go to church.

A minor sadness was that I'd lost my wonderful high soprano voice which had suddenly descended to unattractive contralto. The opera chosen for the 1953 was 'The Yeoman of the Guard' in which I was given the part of Dame Carruthers - but my heart wasn't in it.

Worst of all was the antipathy for my father that grew within me like some sort of emotional cancer. I found that I could not bear being in the same room with him. I found I couldn't bear to shake hands or get anywhere near him, or even look at him. He had destroyed my brother and not only had he got away with it but was now getting from it what he liked most - attention. He was an entertaining talker and people fell for that.

'Philip went up onto the roof believing that it was the Second Coming - that Jesus Christ would return in glory across the roof-tops and he would be there for him - a true believer, one of the elect who would be saved for eternity'.

Instead of saying:

'I forced my son into such a state of desperation that his whole nervous system closed down rather than have to put up with my obsessive, hysterical ranting for another second'.

I talked to mother about the three of us leaving him, but she said:

'I have no money and nowhere to go and if we left I fear that he would convince the authorities that he was a wonderful father and pillar-of-society and take custody of you both, and then I would never see either of you again' - and she burst into tears, almost the only time I ever saw her do so.

On occasions my father said he would no longer have me in the house and I would wander aimlessly round Brighton until late into the night. My friend since primary school was Chris Geer whose father was a popular Brighton police-sergeant known as Ebby. Once or twice police would ask me what I was doing and if I mentioned Ebby it would work wonders, on one occasion getting me a lift home in a squad car.

The habit of solitude (so much a component of the composer's psyche) dates from this time. Not something I wished for, but imposed upon me. The realisation that one is alone and that one must find a way of living alone.

On 25th August mother went with me to a prom in the Albert Hall for the premiere of Vaughan Williams' 'Sinfonia Antarctica'. We had seen 'Scott of the Antarctic' and it sounded exciting, with a wordless soprano part sung by Margaret Ritchie, organ and large orchestra. It was a hot night and after queuing for seats we stood in the promenade near the stage. Both of us were about 5ft 2in tall and crushed in between taller people. I remember the extraordinary effect of a low 64-ft. pedal note holding under the full orchestra. The floor vibrated and I along with it. I found myself being passed out of the hall - having passed out in the hall!

Our fifth form master was another English Literature specialist but with a different view from the irreverent Jack Smithies. The irascible Randall was mostly so because his pupils did not share his massive love and reverence for the subject. He had been an army Colonel in the war and appeared very tough, but when he read Keats or Milton or Donne he would quiver on the edge of tears. He adored Gerard Manley Hopkins and passed this passion on, poetry at its highest level moving me in as strong a way as did music. Once he read us 'The Hound of Heaven', an extraordinary poem by Francis Thompson which I found very difficult to take, but halfway through the creation of Benedictus in 1979 I recalled the phrase 'the labryinth of my own mind' and went back to it, writing tenor Richard Lewis an 11-minute scena which is the very core of the work.

Due to the respect that Randall imbued I later found it difficult to set poor poetry to music - unless it was my own. Fifteen years later I was asked to create a film score called All The Way Up and provide an original song. The producers engaged a distinguished lyric-writer to collaborate with me, but when I read what he had provided I reacted adversely, suggesting he try again. After three tries I decided to have a go myself and submitted all four lyrics to the producers who chose mine. This did not endear me to the writer but it did give me the confidence to create lyrics from there on, adding 'lyric-writer' to my list of professions.

Another effect of the catastrophe was that I was questioning school and the headmaster and his outlook and the CCF and the freemasons and brainwashing and 'what was everything actually for'. I no longer knew and my schoolwork started to slow. I found I was day-dreaming. The Latin master said one day:

'When are you going to stop trying to look intelligent and actually do something?'

Another day the senior French-master said:

'I'm getting very tired of you Blake'.

Outrageously I said: 'and I'm getting very tired of you too', which upset him. I shouldn't have said it.

Up till then I had been a perfect pupil, all home-work immaculately on time, top in all subjects, well-scrubbed, attentive and helpful. But the nightmare had changed me. I was moving towards being (in Diahann's words) - a Pariah

The senior history master at Brighton Hove and Sussex Grammar school was Stephen Pratt who had a passion for classical music. It was rumoured that he had bought a 'Black Box', which sounded suspicious until we realised that it was the first high-class hi-fi system. With this box he mounted record evenings in the school library, one of which presented Benjamin Britten's 'Michelangelo Sonnets' and another 'The Rape of Lucretia'. He worshipped Britten as the foremost living composer at a time when there were many major composers still writing- Richard Strauss and Sibelius had died only recently: Walton, Shostakovich, Copland, Bernstein, Vaughan Williams, Poulenc, Samuel Barber and Stravinsky were all at the height of their powers.

As a result of this black box I inherited a musical gold-mine, because Stephen Pratt decided to dispose of all his 78 records and move into the era of the vinyl LP. He asked in class if anyone would be interested in these demoded objects and I jumped at the offer, even though we didn't have a record player. On being pressured my father bought a basic plastic turntable which we could play through our ancient wireless and Stephen Pratt delivered a pile of disks to our house. One of the sets was of chamber music (Beethoven's opus 96 Violin Sonata played by Max Rostal) and he asked if it would be of interest. I said it would as I had composed some chamber music myself and mother and I played a movement for violin and piano which I'd written. I was apologetic about it because it sounded to me like bad Brahms, but Stephen Pratt was full of enthusiasm and asked my mother if he could invite me to a concert series at the Royal Pavilion. He thought it could benefit my musical interest, which it undoubtedly did. The series of six concerts was given by the Amadeus and consisted of the finest string quartets of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms, played with such total unanimity and love that I can still hear it in my mind today as a perfection never equalled.

The disk sets were top-quality ffrr Decca recordings, still highly regarded: Bela Bartok's 'Concerto for Orchestra', Igor Stravinsky's 'Petrouchka' and Ravel's 'Daphnis and Chloe' - all conducted by Ansermet. I played them over and over again, changing sides and records every 3-4 minutes. Soon after this Brighton Lending Library installed its own LP record section next to a collection of miniature scores and the library became my Aladdin's Cave: Julius Katchen playing the 3rd piano concertos of Bartok and Prokofiev was my absolute favourite, but alongside I listened to Berg and Borodin, Stravinsky and Skryabin, Puccini and Pergolesi, Ravel and Resphigi, Britten and Bloch, Szymanowski and Schoenberg, Webern and Wagner, plainchant, ethnic musics, folk musics, jazz - anything and everything that was music.

Valerie Whitley's treasure trove of music albums had already acquainted me with much of the traditional piano repertoire and I was moving on. In Brighton Library I was examining Howard Ferguson's Piano Sonata when a voice said:

'Are you going to look at that forever?'

'I'm sorry?'

'I am a concert pianist and have just been asked by the BBC to perform the Ferguson Sonata. You are holding what is almost certainly the only copy in the vicinity. I've misplaced my copy and urgently need one'

I was so impressed both that he performed for the BBC and knew Howard Ferguson that I willingly handed it over.

'Well thank you, that's most kind. Why are you interested in it?'

I explained that music was my hobby, that I played the piano and was looking for new repertoire.

'What are you playing at the moment?'

'Amberley Wild Brooks - John Ireland.'

'That's pretty advanced to be just a hobby. I'd like to hear it.'

He suggested a date when I could come over to his flat in Brunswick Square and I played it expecting some sort of kind but dismissive remarks. Instead I got fury:

'You have tremendous aptitude but you have been taught abominably. It is wicked that someone with such innate musicality can have been so disgracefully neglected.'

I told him I'd been taught first by Bonney Churcher and secondly by Albert Chapman - both respected organists.

'Organists should never be let anywhere near a pianist, let alone try to teach one. With the organ you just push down notes and the pipes do the rest. With the piano, every nuance of touch makes a difference, the volume is controlled by by the weight of the arm and the shoulders. It is an instrument not a machine. What about phrasing? What about pedalling? The pedal is the soul of the piano and you have no idea how to use it!'

And there and then he taught me the technique of pedalling each note, depressing the pedal after each note is struck and lifting it a split second before the next.

'This section needs half-pedalling', and he explained that too.

Clive Lythgoe was a classical concert pianist working at the topmost level, a pupil of Myra Hess who had made his debut at the Proms and now gave recitals and performed concertos with leading orchestras.

'I'm doing a recital for the BBC Third Programme which will include the Ferguson. The least I can do is invite you to it.'

We travelled on the Brighton Belle and headed for Maida Vale studios where I sat mesmerised as he played the sonatas of Humphrey Searle, Bernard Stevens and Howard Ferguson.

He'd been given tickets for Svetlana Beriosova in 'Sleeping Beauty' at Covent Garden and I found myself in the famous crush bar being introduced to the conductor John Hollingsworth and the administrator of the Opera House, Sir David Webster:

'I'm told that you're sixteen but can sight-read and play excellent piano and sing and write music. Maybe you should come and work for us as an assistant conductor?'

I was so flabbergasted by this suggestion that I was struck dumb with embarassment. To have suddenly stepped from nowhere to the highest echelons of the music world was (in modern parlance) 'mind-blowing'. The bell rang and we dispersed. Perhaps I should have followed this up, but I had no idea how to do so.

But my piano-playing had improved and my rendition of 'Amberley Wild Brooks' in the school's house music competiton caused attention.

'We were all up to our necks in water!' chortled jolly Jack Smithies.

Although I had sat for Grade VIII several years earlier I had only passed with a merit and now I sat it again, gaining a Distinction of 138 marks out of 150 and the comment:

'Real talent shown. Splendid!'

I started to think seriously about music and asked the careers master if there was such a thing as a musical career.

'Very precarious' he said, and was right.

At Easter I went on a 3-week visit to the family of Jan and Dorli Althoff, German exchange friends in Braunschweig, where my playing was enthusiastically welcomed.

I had a stab at setting a Shakespeare sonnet, and in the summer composed an original Piano Fantasy, dedicated to a current girl-friend, Heather Waterman, three years older than me. She played the piano herself and, comparing my little effort with Beethoven et al, was unimpressed.

That Autumn I seemed to know no bounds, my interests not by any means confined to music. I led debates in the Literary and Debating Society, won the Newton Cup fifth form prize for best all-round results, the tennis doubles and the Headmaster's Reading prize, discovering 'sprung rhythm' and giving an impassioned reading from Gerard Manley Hopkins''The Wreck of the Deutschland' that seemed to surprise people even more than my piano-playing.

Jean-Claude visited us and introduced me to the novel idea that cinema could be an art-form - a thought that was to have far-reaching consequences. There were 39 cinemas in Brighton at that time, including two dedicated to continental films. We saw Rene Clair's film/opera/fantasy 'Les Belles de Nuit' with Gerard Philippe - a genre of film unthinkable in either England or USA, 'Les Sept Pecheurs Mortales','Eduard et Caroline', 'Jour de Fete'. In all of them I loved the magical combination of music and image, the way in which cinema could achieve poetry.

Brighton Library had a philosophy section placed as inaccessibly as possible at the far end of a high gallery. I wanted to know about philosophy. Since 1953 I had lost my belief system and desperately needed to find a replacement. I started with Bertrand Russell's 'History of Western Philosphy' which was like an impersonal travel-book of writers on the subject, none of whom seemed to fire him with any sort of passion or interest. If pressed perhaps he might not have expressed much enthusiasm for Nietzsche but I hold him responsible for introducing him to me.

'Most people hold ideas like fossils in a glass case that they occasionally take out and dust, but the real seeker after truth pursues ideas like a hunter savagely spearing live fish.'

This was more like it!

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche had spent his life writing down every idea that came into his head. He arranged them in paragraphs and had them published as books with titles like 'Thus spoke Zarathustra', 'Beyond Good and Evil' or 'Twilight of the Idols'. He was brought up as a Christian by a father who was a Pastor but then lost his belief, declaring tragically and dramatically:

'God is Dead'.

He was passionate about music and culture and the lack of appreciation accorded to it. We seemed to have quite a lot in common and much of that summer I was on the beach reading him, his prose style getting rather uncomfortably entangled with my own and Proust's. Unperturbed I began to write down my own ideas, determined to create my own philosophy.

As William Blake said: 'I must create my own system or be enslav'd by that of another man's'.

David Shaw had left school to take up his organ scholarship at Brasenose and for the first time I was allowed to conduct the house choir and decide on the programme for the inter-house music competition. There was a boy in Ireland House who played good violin and he asked if I could write him something for it. I composed Burlesca for violin and piano but was so nervous of him thinking it was rubbish that I couldn't face going to the rehearsal. Albert Chapman reprimanded me severely:

'Poor little chap, he waited for half an hour for you to turn up!'

I learnt that in the music world there is no such thing as not turning up. I apologised and we made another date and he did play it at the competition very well and encouraged by this I re-attacked the Piano Trio that I'd abandoned the previous year by embarking on an Andante for piano trio.

Clive rang my mother and asked if she would come over to visit and talk about me.

'What do you think of Howard's playing? Is he really any good?'

'He is a huge talent Mrs Blake, and he must be allowed to develop to the fullest. I've helped him a bit but I'm not a teacher and I'm leaving to live in London. The best piano teacher in Sussex is Maud Hornsby in Rottingdean. She's getting on now but has taught some most distinguished players, among them Kyla Greenbaum and Ronald Smith. I could talk to her and see if she would agree to teach him. Would you agree to this?'

Mother did agree and I cycled to Rottingdean along the clifftops. A maid ushered me into a large Tudor-style cottage, the interior dark and mysterious, reminiscent of 'Blithe Spirit'. In a long low room to the left of the lobby were two magnificent grand pianos, much music, many books and photographs of musicians. Maud Hornsby had a mop of wild grey hair and the eyes of Madam Arcati. Her sister was Lady Beaconsfield who lived there with her. She was not more than 5 feet tall and could have been 80 years old, or even more.

'What will you play for me?'

'Beethoven'

I started to play the early D major sonata rather nervously and she moved slowly round the room listening intently. She paced and said nothing. I felt large, strong hands descend heavily onto my shoulders.

'Weight', in a low whisper, 'more weight'.

For one awful moment my hair tingled and an icy finger went down my spine. We had been to an end-of-the-pier performance of 'Ladies in Retirement' where the old lady murderess slowly descends the stairs with a rope, creeps up behind her sister at the piano ...

The hands pressed down and started to 'play'- on my shoulders.

'Do you feel how I am transferring my weight onto the keyboard?'

Yes, I did feel. We had started the lesson.

'All my fingers have an equal weight and depth.'

Yes, I understood.

'I will start to teach you, but I am very old and and there is a lot of work to be done'.

Every Monday for 4 months I cycled to Rottingdean and at home I practised as never before- scales at last and arpeggios and studies and the Beethoven Variations in C minor and ever more weight. But one day in the summer Maud Hornsby invited my parents to tea:

'Your son is very talented and must go to the Royal Academy and become a pianist, but he has so much ground to make up technically and it will take a lot of very hard work. I fear that I am too old for the task in hand but I have a suggestion. There is a young lady who has just come down to live in Brighton with her mother and she is going to teach piano at Roedean Girls School. She might be persuaded to take Howard as a private pupil if I spoke to her.'

However, when the school broke up for Easter I wasn't thinking nearly so much about piano as about writing something. I so much wanted to compose something and resolved to create a piano trio during the holiday. I managed to complete the first movement and sketched out two others. I thought perhaps somebody would organise a performance but nobody at school was interested and I didn't continue, being amazed several years later when the music publisher Chappell's thought it excellent and published the finished movement as Fantasy-allegro.

I was sure how or for whom to write music. Another girl-friend, Doreen, who had recently started piano lessons, knitted me a bright-yellow sweater for my birthday and I was so pleased with it that I responded by writing her some simple piano music, 'Party Pieces', which I copied out very carefully in ink, bound, designed a painted cover for and presented to her. She was not pleased. Perhaps she thought they were too easy and an insult to her skills, or more likely she thought

'Who does he think he is, Beethoven?'

She would have been happier with a box of chocolates and broke off relations.

In August I went for a never-to-be-fogotten two weeks with the Deschamps family, first in Nevers where I was much in demand for my piano-playing and then in Paris where we stayed with an aunt and uncle in the Rue Lafayette and did a whirlwind tour of the city to an unceasing stream of fact, myth and cultural comment from Jean-Claude. The songs of Gilbert Becaud, Jacques Brel and George Brassens were in the shops and a fabulous new recording of the Chopin Waltzes released by Dinu Lipatti - a revelation, which one could hear everywhere, echoing around stores and cafes and from open windows in passage-ways.

I had my first lesson with Christine Pembridge in September and if I had thought Maud Hornsby made me practise hard it was as nothing compared with what I experienced now. As a child she had first studied with Adelina de Lara, a child prodigy who had been a pupil of Clara Schumann and a notable exponent of the works of Robert Schumann, giving her last Wigmore recital in 1954 at the age of 82. One of the first pieces I learnt with Christine was his Romanza in F sharp, a piece I adored for its singing quality, produced in thirds by both thumbs in the inner parts of the texture. Christine took great pains to demonstrate to me how to achieve this lyricism from the piano, passed down directly from Clara, and suggested I use it as an audition piece for the BBC, who accepted me for a 'young artist' spot. The broadcast went out on 7th September 1957 and Christine was delighted to receive a post card:

'I've just been listening to your pupil play the Schumann F sharp. It was most beautifully played (I am most fussy over that Romance). I congratulate you and him. Love Adelina.'

Several writers have pointed out the influence of Schumann on my writing and this is nowhere more strongly felt than in 'Make-believe' the poignant end-song on 'Granpa' which is also pitched in that richest of all keys, F sharp major, perhaps in deference to Robert and Clara two generations on.

After Adelina, Christine had studied at the Royal Academy with Harold Craxton, vying for the top prizes with Peter Katin, and later still taking master classes in Paris with Marguerite Long, the friend and exponent of Ravel. At 21 she returned to give a performance of the Brahms 2nd concerto at the Proms, but after a terrific performance, found that she had strained her hands and was advised by her doctor to rest for at least a year. Ignoring this advice she soldiered on to give a further performance of the work with Norman del Mar and the Halle which proved to be a fatal mistake - the sheaths of the tendons in her hands were torn and irrevocably damaged. Enormously gifted both musically and intellectually she was let down by frailness of physique and the possibility of conquering the concert world was denied to her. A tragedy.

She attacked my personalised, easy-going delivery of the repertoire with the same sort of fury as Clive's.

'You're not doing the correct fingering!'

'But I can play it'

'That is not the point. You make everything you play sound like your own personality - but it shouldn't! You have to get inside great composers and find their style and their historical tradition and interpret their musical sensiblity. When you play Beethoven it sounds like Brahms and when you play Brahms it sounds like Chopin. It's no good'

And she was right of course, because in a way I never was cut out to be a full-time interpreter- the music I really wanted to play was my own, although I didn't yet realise it, and hadn't yet written it

I worked with her and for her, and attacked my technique from all angles using Cramer and Hanon and the Chopin studies - double thirds, double octaves, left-hand facility in the 'Revolutionary', legato fluidity in the F minor opus 10. She taught me a Gigue in G major by Bach virtually note by note, insisting on exact equality of tone, exact chording, exact part-balance and exact dynamics. It did me the world of good and I found I wanted to please her more than anything in the world- it was so difficult to do, but so rewarding if I did it.

The relationship that grew so rapidly between us, whilst not being sexual, was very close in many ways despite our 10-year age difference. Perhaps Christine was in love with me but she desperately did not want to have sex. As a teenager she had been persuaded or coerced into some sort of threesome with musicians whom she had previously respected, and this had proved to be a traumatic turning-point for her.

Instead she had passions:

She had a passion for bird-watching which she passed on to me, and we would hike across the Downs in pursuit of the Dartford Warbler and the Blackcap.

She had a passion for plants and an encyclopaedic knowledge of them, especially Alpines.

She had a passion for dogs, especially Collies and the breeding of them.

She had a penchant towards the mystical and clairvoyant and introduced it to me by way of books like Axel Munthe's 'The Story of San Michele' and Heinrich Harrer's 'Seven Years in Tibet'.

She had passions for Astrology, Alternative Medicine and Palmistry.

She also had a passion for her former teacher Harold Craxton, worshipping everything about him including his somewhat outdated teaching-pieces which she continued to champion for many years, long after their sell-by date.

And perhaps she had a passion for turning me into the great pianist she so much would have liked to be.

In 1971 a Hollywood film was released called 'The Mephisto Waltz'.

'Devil-worshipping world-famous pianist dying of leukaemia meets ex-musician turned music-writer usurping younger man's hands and personality to pursue incestuous relationship with his daughter.'

Perhaps a remake of an earlier version:

'Brilliant blonde pianist with occult inclinations tragically deprived of use of hands meets young composer-pianist usurping his hands and personality to retain relationship with fading father-figure.'

The school, in the person of Harry Brogden headmaster, took a far less rosy view of my passion for the piano and he button-holed me one day after prayers.

'What team-sports are you doing Blake?'

'Tennis sir'.

'That is not a team-sport Blake. What about football and cricket?'

'Well yes I have done quite a lot sir'.

'But not for some time Blake'

'Well no perhaps not'.

'I didn't make you a prefect last year because I was observing this obsession of yours with music Blake. After your excellent academic record and the Newton Cup in the fifth you should rightfully have become a prefect and remained as part of your peer-group'.

'Yes sir'.

'I am still not going to elevate you in this way unless I have an undertaking from you that you will give up all this music nonsense and buckle down to work. We are certain you could gain a place at Oxford for History if you put your back into it'.

'Well I'm not sure I want to do that sir. What I wanted to study was Philosophy but you said I couldn't'.

'History is a splendid preparation for philosophy Blake'

'But it's not at all the same sir'.

'We don't teach philosophy here'.

'No sir'.

'So can I have your assurance Blake?'

'Well it's a bit difficult now because my teacher Miss Pembridge has entered me for the Hastings Festival and for The Royal Academy and Harold Craxton has said he will take me on as a pupil if I win a scholarship, so I would really like to see what happens'.

'You stand in danger of ruining your entire school career Blake - if not indeed your whole life. Do you realise that Blake?'.

'Yes sir'.

Christine entered me for The Hastings Competitive Festival Scholarship as a pianist. It was the only festival in the South of England at that time that offerred a fully-paid-up scholarship, and much sought-after. I played the Chopin F major Ballade, the Prelude and Fugue in B flat minor by Bach from the first book of the '48' and the A flat sonata op.26 of Beethoven. The chief adjudicator was Sidney Harrison, piano professor at The Guildhall and he announced me as winner in all three categories and the new holder of the John Lockey Scholarship, entitling me to three years free tuition at a music college of my choice. I played the ballade again at the end-of-festival concert in Hastings' White Rock Pavilion and was suddenly surrounded by press and festival staff and musicians and autograph-hunters all screaming excitedly at me. I was unable to deal with it or know what to say, and in a slight lull I backed off and ran down to the beach in total panic.

I was utterly unprepared for success. I did not come from an affluent background or from a family of musicians and my father had incessantly said:

'I will not have the word 'clever' spoken in this house. I will not have anybody showing off.'

Yet here I was receiving huge adulation for being 'clever', for 'showing off'. Up till this point I had thought there must be some mistake. Surely I couldn't possibly be good enough to consider a musical career. Or could I? All the authority figures around said I couldn't and I knew if I told the headmaster that I had won a piano scholarship he would be furious.

He was, and the next morning after prayers, amidst announcements of house standards for the hop, step and jump and half-mile standards there was pointedly no announcement of the fact that I had won a scholarship to The Royal Academy of Music, nor as far as I know is there any record of it to this day on those hallowed walls of Academe. That afternoon I decided not to honour the CCF with my presence as Sergeant of the Drums, instead writing a letter of abdication from the school, saying that I needed time to practise piano in the hope of catching up with other students at the RAM who would be years and years ahead of me.

Curiously the abdication was accepted. Perhaps Brogden thought he could still persuade me to change my mind, and he did enlist a couple of masters to help him in this, but most half-heartedly it has to be said, for both Stephen Pratt and Jolly Jack Smithies actually thought I would be a musician, but weren't allowed to say so. In fact all anyone needed to have done would have been to explain to me the advantages of Oxford and perhaps even suggest a visit there. My brother had been at St. Peters Hall but never invited me there and had told me that if one came from a Grammar School they wouldn't let you join any of the clubs or organizations and they would laugh at you for being lower class, or having no money or style. Also, as far as I knew, nobody studied piano at Oxford, only organ. All in all I had not liked the sound of it.

I became 'persona non grata', an outsider. It didn't feel so much different from normal since I had been more or less relegated to that category because of music since the start of the sixth form eighteen months earlier. In fact I felt suddenly free and well after several years of feeling hemmed-in and sick.

Spurred on by Christine, I sat for the entrance exam to the RAM, for The Associated Board Piano Scholarship and for a Sussex County University Award. I went up to London for an interview at the RAM where I was interviewed by the Wardens, Myers Foggin and Terence Lovett. I needed to have a second study and had put down Organ, but when asked to show some written work I produced the Andante for piano trio which they asked me to play.

'You seem to want to express yourself in music. We think you should take composition as a second study'

A step in the direction of being a composer was taken. A step I had never even considered.

When I went back to the school to sit A and S levels I was pointedly cold-shouldered. I got very good results nevertheless and overall felt that I had been most fortunate to receive an absolutely free first-class education, courtesy of the Welfare State. I met a beautiful new blonde girl-friend called Anna Partridge and wrote a tenor and piano song to words by Hardy. Earth and Air and Rain , hardly her sort of thing since she was heavily into Chris Barber and Trad Jazz.

I had high hopes of the Royal Academy - too high. I believed it would be a heaven on earth where music was God. No more critical fathers or headmasters or brothers or small-minded neighbours and relatives. Just glorious music! But it wasn't quite like that.

My friendship with Christine continued on but I missed her teaching terribly. She had introduced me to Harold Craxton, her hero and father-figure, and now I was studying with him, but how could I possibly explain that I was 'Christine's hands' and left to myself wasn't all that interested in becoming a concert pianist. The lessons weren't at all like Christine's. He took a very non-romantic view of music and would say whilst I was attempting Liszt or Chopin:

'Don't get so excited.'

And I would say:

'But surely that's the whole point of it.'

Looking back I believe I would have been happier at The Guildhall with Sidney Harrison who had awarded me the prizes at Hastings and asked if he could take me on as a student. I refused due to the prior arrangement that Christine had made with Craxton. Craxton was the authority on Beethoven and the classics and at that time I so much wanted to play more modern material, which was not much part of his outlook. Though witty and affable he was also far from young and tended to fall asleep as I was playing. I didn't really get on with him.

In the first week I was invited to an informal reception by the principal, Sir Thomas Armstrong, a man with establishment and superiority stamped on him, whose son was to become head of the Civil Service and immortalize himself with the phrase: 'Economical with the truth.'

There were several string players there to whom he said:

'I sincerely hope that none of you will sink to the level of playing orchestral music. Chamber music is of course the only real music of quality.'

I thought this absurd, snobbish, elitist and untrue.

Harmony classes with a Dr. Pritchard took me back to Bonney Churcher at the age of ten. I had done it all long before. It seemed an imposition and dry as dust. He asked what I intended to do for a living.

'I want to compose.'

'I have written organ music for over 30 years and have so far made the princely sum of two and sevenpence halfpenny.'

'Perhaps you aren't any good'

'Mr. Blake I don't think you need attend any further lessons.'

Dr. William Cole's Aural classes were basic and when I discovered that the fifth-year classes followed straight on from the first year class I strayed into the next session, at the end of the year coming first. When it was discovered that I was only a first-year student it did not go down at all well.

There was a wonderful student chorus under the tough and excellent choir trainer Frederick Jackson, from whom I learned a great deal, singing tenor in my first term in an all-Vaughan- Williams concert with Sir Ralph sitting in the front row. In the next term we gave a hugely energetic performance of Walton's Belshazzar's Feast. After that the choir was taken over by the unsmiling Sir Thomas, who presided over Bach's B minor Mass rather than conducting it, constantly stopping to explain its importance and gravity.

Mozart was once ticked off for not being serious enough about music to which he responded:

'The verb used to qualify music is play'. Schiller invented a word to define this: 'the urge to play', in German 'Spieltrieb', the name I was to give to my first string quartet.

I had never met a composer before and was thrilled to have been taken on by such a distinguished figure as Howard Ferguson. He was kind, affable and attentive. I would say that I was very unsure of myself and he'd quote William Blake:

'If the Sun and Moon should doubt they'd immediately go out.'

If I squeezed too many notes into a chord he'd say:

'Oh, oh, squashed flies!'

He asked me first to arrange a folk tune and I made an arrangement for horn and piano Folk Song . He introduced me to Gordon Jacob's book 'Orchestration Technique' and I had begun to work my way through all the exercises, greatly enjoying it. At the start of the second term he produced a simple theme of Bartok's and suggested I create a set of variations. I couldn't have been happier.

The theme which he provided came from 'Mikrokosmos' and Variations on a theme of Bartok caused a sea-change in my life. We were still in the noisy old house in Preston Road and in order to concentrate I took frequent walks, thinking deeply about how to create music and concentrating in a way I'd never done before. Without referring to the piano I nevertheless started to develop a set of passionately-conceived movements for the piano in a style that was far more cogent and contemporary-sounding than anything previous.

I became inspired with musical ideas and started to realise how extraordinarily important and fulfilling this was for me. At the same time I sensed that the pursuit of such creativity would probably be an isolated and lonely activity. In variations 6 and 7 I knew I had struck a real vein of originality, expressing my profoundest feelings.

Howard Ferguson grasped what I had done and was full of admiration saying that the work was so good that it ought to win a major Academy composition prize and entered it for one that was imminent.

But it neither won a prize nor was it commended. I wasn't particularly upset by this but he seemed suddenly sadder. He said that the Academy had taken a change of direction and they were expecting composition students to work with the 12-tone system.

'Well I could try that.'

'No it wouldn't be for you.'

He seemed to grow even sadder.

'I have to tell you that I am going to wind up my activities as a composition professor and I won't be able to continue you with you into the next term.'

This devastated me. I had just glimpsed a wonderful new world and then just as suddenly lost it.

I had brought some new songs to the lesson - Osbert Sitwell's Winter the Huntsman and sketches for a James Joyce cycle, Chamber Music, but the shock of this news caused me to abandon them and stop composing altogether.

Howard Ferguson in fact not only gave up teaching but gave up the whole vocation of music and from 1959 was himself never to write another note until he died 40 years later. Was he upset that I'd written such a brilliant piece, was he upset because the authorities had disapproved of his teaching methods, or did he just think that I was a waste of time? I seemed to have mortally upset him without my knowing why. Several times over the years I wrote to him and once or twice I saw him at concerts, but he never once spoke to me again.

The music establishment had started to move the goal-posts. In France the politically astute Pierre Boulez had started to eliminate new expressions of tonal music and composers who might feel tempted to indulge therein. In Germany and Italy and the USA the tonal establishment had started to give way under the intellectual onslaught occasioned by the exaggerated promotion of atonalism, one excuse being given that Hitler's Germany had been regerded as being opposed to avant-garde music, therefore we should play nothing but avant-garde music - an absurd non-sequitur. Simultaneously a movement began to totally eliminate the category of 'light' music. New tonal music of any sort was unacceptable and Radio 3 personnel were advised to play modern music related to the 12-tone system and push 'early music', doing their best to reduce the essential staple diet of 'romantic' music and 'classics.'

Everbody at the Academy was talking about 12-tone music, the avant-garde, aleatoric music, political expressionism, Cornelius Cardew, composing with dustbins, with sine waves, with drawing-pins stuck in pianos, atonality, bi-tonality, microtonality, half-tones, quarter-tones, anything at all except music music.

My father had taken early retirement and started to unwind, taking on extra-mural painting lessons three times a week at Brighton Art School which he found all-absorbing. It took his mind off us and with it the pressure. After I had won the piano scholarship I asked him if we couldn't look for a more comfortable house, explaining to him that it would be difficult for me to stay in a terraced house where neighbours would be certain to complain if I were to practise the long hours expected of me. Although I had a scholarship for my tuition and a local university grant to pay for a season ticket there would be no way I could afford to move to London, find my own accommodation and acquire a living-space and piano. Perhaps my father felt guilty about what had happened with my brother, or more probably had just never thought about moving, but he gradually went along with the proposal, agreeing that I should be given a chance. After much searching we found a detached house at the other end of Preston Park and moved in on 30th April 1958 where the large untended garden was bursting with blossom. I was delighted beyond words.

On the very same day, synchronicity struck somewhat adversely when Harold Craxton rang:

'I think you should move to London. It is not healthy for you to have this close relationship with your ex-teacher Miss Pembridge and I believe you are becoming isolated away from the society of either students. The faculty are somewhat concerned about you.'

'I don't have a close relationship with Miss Pembridge.'

'I think it would be a good idea if you moved.'

In fact everything had changed in the short time since we started house-hunting. My ambition to be a pianist had started to wane and been thrillingly overtaken by the idea of becoming a composer. Yet at the very moment I had dramatically awoken to this I'd been dropped from a great height by my greatly-admired composition professor. There were ominous rumblings from all the tutorial staff about my sense of direction. The Warden and the Principal thought I should give up hopes of becoming a concert pianist or a composer and take a teaching course, something which would be total anathema to me. After all I could have taken the path to Oxford and a university degree. Becoming a piano teacher in a school was not at all what I had in mind. I had been most unhappy at school and would rather do anything but teach. I received a letter from Sir Thomas:

'I am disturbed by the reports that I am receiving about your work in the R.A.M., especially in view of the good opinion that I had formed of your talents and potentialities. At present you do not seem to be showing a sense of disciplined purpose and I should like to have an opportunity to discuss the matter fully with you. Will you please ring up my secretary Miss Lefley on Monday April 13 and make an appointment for that week.'

'Do you have a private income Blake?'

'No sir.'

'Could your father provide you with a private income for ten years?'

'I've no idea sir, but I don't think he would.'

'Then you must take the teaching course and aim at becoming a teacher.'

'Are you saying that I don't have the talent to succeed as a musician sir?'

'I am telling you the facts of life Mr. Blake and saying that your only option is to become a teacher.'

'With respect sir I would rather become a dustman.'

I realised later that this was a tactless thing to say. A tiny glint of venom sparkled in his eyes. I had two years more of my private scholarship fully paid up and he would have found it difficult to expel me, but he would find it even more difficult to know what to do with me if I remained.

I had been brought up to obey every last word that my parents breathed, to accept that I should work, learn, be punctual, be respectful, do as I was asked to do by those older and better than myself - a system that had left me with very little latitude, but when this system fell apart before my eyes at the age of fourteen I had had nothing with which to replace it and it had made me cast about desperately for a new philosophy ever since. My disillusion with my father had spread to a disillusion with authority figures in general, and since I had been brought up to do everything thoroughly and with total conviction this applied equally to my disillusion - at this moment with Sir Thomas.

'What else do you have in mind Mister Blake?'

'Well I need to address a whole sheaf of questions sir. The origins and practise of religion, the purpose and application of philosophy, the evolution and use of psychology, the history and meaning of the arts, the role of the artist in society, how knowledge is acquired, the future of music and film and poetry, and perhaps an examination of the possibility of creating a non-Wagnerian equivalent of the 'Gesamtkunstwerk', how this might be achieved and so on.'

'I see.' (There was a long pause)

'Well, you'll be hearing from us Mister Blake.'

'Thank you Sir.'

Sir Thomas had said that I lacked 'disciplined purpose' and I took this to heart. I must find 'disciplined purpose'. I now had the most marvellous place to live and work in and I resolved to make the absolute utmost of my wonderful opportunities, for which I was enormously grateful. I had a grant from the Sussex County Council and a scholarship at The Royal Academy. I saw myself as 'an heir to nationalised education', like a prince in the bygone days of class, aristocracy and privilege. I thought:

'Long live the Welfare State!'

I bought a stout foolscap exercise book and began writing my thoughts down. The style in which I wrote was borrowed from Nietzsche and Hegel (the dialectic) but mixed with shades of Gerard Manley Hopkins and the divine William Blake, who became one of my primary mentors:

'I must create my own system or be enslaved by that of another man's.'

I wrote in long-hand in ink and the writing of thought became an integral factor of my life, generating (so far) 27 volumes and when counted during the Faber litigation in 1999 well over 10,000 pages.

Christine and I went for a week's walking in the Welsh hills, something I'd enjoyed doing with my parents under the auspices of the Holiday Fellowship, the most innocent of Christian family-style organizations, sleeping in segregated dormitories - but Harold heard about it and thought the worst. At the start of my second year he more or less ordered me to stop seeing Christine, suggesting again that I should move to London, something I couldn't afford to do. The result of his interference was damaging since I started to lose a most powerful ally and supporter in Christine. As far as piano-playing was concerned she had been my inspiration. I now became wary of Craxton and less than enthusiastic to work with him or for him and my interest in the piano waned and altered.

Meanwhile the teachers of the Academy had put their heads together to try and rekindle my interest in the piano. Myers Foggin called me to his office and asked if I would be interested in playing the piano for a violinist. Miles Baster was an important figure in the Academy as leader of the first orchestra, scholarship-holder and final-year student. He urgently needed someone to play the orchestral part of the Elgar Violin Concerto since he had the opportunity to audition for six months of master-classes in the Juillard School of Music in New York. The Juillard Quartet were in London recording for the BBC and wanted to hear him.

I agreed and a few days later we went to Broadcasting House and played to them. I loved it and so did they. Miles was invited to study with Louis Persinger, the teacher of Menuhin. Meanwhile, said Miles, why don't we play a few concerts? We started learning duo repertoire: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Faure, Prokofiev, Bartok, Ravel, and the most divinely-romantic of all violin sonatas- the Cesar Franck. We loved playing it so much that we started to commit it to memory and did one or two concerts.

We were invited to a foreign girls' finishing school near Eastbourne.I have never seen such a remarkable collection of beautiful girls at one time, about 200 all between 18 and 21. We were delighted to be told by the aged headmistress that she would introduce us to some carefully-chosen girls after the concert. We played with an all-consuming passion, as if our lives depended on it. Bach, Mozart and then the devastating Cesar Franck which received rapturous applause from 200 ecstatic and beautiful young faces. Up to the study for some pleasanteries and then- the girls! In came six of the most unattractive females I have ever seen. Yes, they were certainly hand-picked and we gave no trouble.

Another performance of it got me into a whole lot of trouble. I met Elona Thomas on the Brighton-London train in the company of John Higham, a fellow piano student at the Academy. She was 19, a soprano student at The Guildhall with long naturally-blond hair falling to her waist in a pony-tail and the most exquisite features I had ever seen in my whole life. We talked about music and I mentioned that Miles and I were giving a recital in Brighton at Port Hall, the home of the Pembridges. John said he would like to bring Elona along. This time the magic of the Cesar Franck worked its spell well and truly.

After the recital she approached me with eyes shining and a smile that would have melted a battleship.

'Couldn't we meet for a coffee?'

Brighton was teeming with coffee-bars in the late fifties and a love-affair began between the Hideaway, the Penny-Farthing, the Troubadour and her family's superlative house in Regency Parade, several doors from the Oliviers. At the Hideaway they would play endless romantic ballads of Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis and Julie London, which she would sing along with very softly, knowing all the lyrics. It was the first time I had listened to that sort of music and it cast a spell over me.

The love affair upset the Pembridges, since they had inadvertently contrived the first assignation; it upset John Higham whose girl-friend Elona was; and it upset Miles. Miles turned out to be gay and perhaps hoped I would partner him on more than just the piano. He was a superb violinist. He played and owned an Amati which despite its great value he treated very casually, chain-smoking through rehearsals and dextrously flicking ash into the S-holes.

'Surely that's very bad for the instrument?'

'It helps preserve the wood.'

He dressed in Saville Row tailored suits and bespoke shoes. He had a fine taste in restaurants, which he insisted on treating me to, and spoke with a cultivated but not exaggerated accent. He claimed to have bought his first car at the age of seven in an auction in Cornwall, the locals knowing that his father would cover it. He had played the Paganini D major at the age of twelve, gained scholarships, become leader of the National Youth Orchestra and the Academy and appeared set to become a soloist. We heard Christian Ferras play the Brahms at the RFH and Miles said:

'He has become a great violinist despite being a millionaire.'

Was Miles a millionaire? A year later he was clearly suffering from immense anguish. He told me at last:

'My father was a first-class accountant and lawyer and I always loved and respected him and my mother. I grew up with everything I could ever ask for. We lived in a huge house and mixed in the best circles. I've had the finest education. I sensed something was wrong but I didn't know what. I have suddenly learnt that he acted on behalf of criminals. He's let them down and they've killed him. It's all come out. I can't live with that.'

Poor Miles. Everything and nothing.

He was offerred the post of violin professor at Glasgow and Edinburgh and leadership of the Edinburgh String Quartet. He had decided to give up all thought of a solo career and devote himself to the less-conspicuous world of chamber music and asked if I would first play a recital at Corpus Christi College Oxford and then his inaugural recital at The Leith Hall. They both seemed to be a great success and he begged me to come to Scotland as harpsichordist for the chamber orchestra and as continuing duo-recitalist. But I decided not. I couldn't play the harpsichord, I didn't want a whole career as an accompanist and, to be honest, I didn't want to leave Elona.

In fact Miles stayed in Edinburgh for the rest of his life, dedicating himself wholely to music and apparently uninterested in publicity, fame or money. If I was in Edinburgh I would sometimes meet him, but perhaps he never forgave me for, in his eyes, deserting him. I once went back to his apartment and found it difficult to believe. It was a council flat on the 20th floor of a block with virtually no furniture and freezing cold because of draughts that weren't rectified. I started blocking them up for him but he stopped me:

'They're good for me'

'Why do you live here Miles?'

'It's a great place to practise.'

I met him for lunch when The Snowman Ballet was at The Edinburgh Festival Theatre in 2002 and got him a ticket. Back in London I sent a note saying how pleased I was to have seen him and how glad I was to see him looking happy and well, but several days later I had a call:

'This is the Leith Police.'

It wasn't a joke.

'We had to enter the flat belonging to Miles Baster since he has gone missing. Do you know his whereabouts?'

'Why are you asking me?'

'The only correspondence of any sort in the flat was a note from you, sir. We thought he might have contacted you.'

He hadn't, nor anyone else. A member of his quartet rang me a long time later. He had gone back to his roots in Cornwall. He was ill and he had died. There was to be a memorial concert. Would I record a message?

Poor Miles. I began a Violin Sonata for him but could never complete it to my satisfaction. In 2008 some time after he had died I revised it by writing a new slow movement as a 'requiem' to him and the other two movements fell into place.

I was still having piano lessons from Craxton and one day played him the 'Variations on a Theme of Bartok'. He lit up in a way he had never ever done when I tried to play anything in the classical repertoire.

'Can you wait and play that again to my next student?'

'Yes of course.'

Into the room came the most beautiful 18-year-old blonde-haired girl and he introduced me.

'This is Thorunn Tryggvaason, but we call her Dody. Her family are from Iceland but she lives with her parents and family in Hendon. She's been a pupil of mine since she was seven, when she played a Mozart concerto with Barbirolli.'

I had heard of her of course, a child prodigy and now in her final year.

'Listen to this' he said, and I played my Variations again.

'I bet you could play the theme back to us by ear'.

She sat down and did so.

'It sounds like Bartok.'

''You are correct. What do you think of it?'

'I like it'

'What about performing it at your final Academy recital? A work by another student?'

'Yes, all right, I would like to'.

I invited her to go out with me but she was always monumentally busy and organised, like Greta Garbo in Ninotchka. Once I persuaded her to visit me in Brighton where I was struggling fairly hopelesly to write a piano concerto.

'It will take you too long' she said gravely.

'What will?'

'For you to get anywhere. It will take a very long time.'

'I suppose it will.'

'I am going to go to Moscow, and I'm going to find a pianist and I'm going to marry him and I shall make him into the most famous pianist in the world.'

She gave the most dazzling perfomance of my variations and left almost immediately to study with Lev Oborin, sending me occasional postcards.

'There are some very good players in my class here in Moscow, but it is rather cold weather'

'There is one very good player called Vladimir.'

'Vladimir and I are working a little together'

Then the cards stopped until the world press announced the extraordinary news that a Russian pianist called Vladimir Ashkenazy and his Icelandic/English wife had been given permission by Kruschev personally to leave the USSR and work in the West with no recriminations or problems, an unheard of phenomenon during the Cold War. Kruschev was no match for the iron-willed Dody!

The kindly wardens of the RAM were still concerned about me and realised that I was struggling with both my own psyche and my philosophy of the Arts. They thought it useful to provide me with a kindly tutor versed in the more intellectual sides of music. His name was Dr.Philip Brown and he lived in a house in Redcliffe Square, a learned musicologist, editor of the Oxford Companion to Music. We met first for a tutorial at the RAM but then he decided that he would prefer to meet me once a week for lunch at the Athenaeum Club in St.James's of which he was a member. After our first lunch we took the lift up to the library.

'You may have noticed that the lift has the same shape as a coffin?'

'Really? Why's that?'

'Because so many members die upstairs. Look at this piece of music for piano. Who do you think wrote it?'

'Somebody nineteenth-century?'

'It's by Berlioz, who didn't write piano music. This is a transcription from his orchestral music.'

'It's rather awful isn't it?'

'It's not just awful. It's rubbish without the orchestration.'

The idea was that I would tell Dr. Brown all my thoughts and conjectures and he would help put them into shape with me, but I couldn't seem to tell him what I was thinking and I wouldn't show him any of the writings since they embarassed me and I felt were sure to embarass him. I had recently seen Eisenstein's 'Battleship Potemkin' at Brighton's new Paris Cinema and had been overwhelmed - a combination of brilliant images synchronised to tremendous music, communicating both intellectually and emotionally. I saw that cinema in its early days had evolved as an art form but due to its ability to generate vast income from mass audiences had been hi-jacked and reduced to the banale. I felt that the future of the arts must lie in a resurrection of the cinema as fine art (and as a combination of all the existing arts) and wished to devote my life to that end.

I began to search around for a university course that might relate to this view. I tried the London Polytechnic but they said I should take a course in photography. I explained that I was a musician and wanted to approach film from the point of view of a composer and possibly film director but they didn't grasp this - or it didn't fit any course. I then tried the London Film School in Electric Avenue Brixton who weren't very sure what I meant but suggested I could take a general course in film-making. They advised me to talk to the Sussex Education Authority and try and re-locate my university grant. I did this and talked to them, but they couldn't see what I was driving at either and felt I should 'make the most of the Academy' and complete my 3-year scholarship as a pianist.

I hardly wrote any music but toyed with some piano pieces left incomplete. Many years later these became 'Prelude, Sarabande and Gigue' for solo guitar.

They were very helpful and sympathetic and one of them was a Dr.Brian Stone. When I composed 'Four Songs of the Nativity' for The Bach Choir in 1990 I chose some verses from the Penguin Books 'Mediaeval English Verse' and only after the first performance in St.Paul's noticed that the English translation had been made by the same Brian Stone. I wish I could have thanked him.

I dreamt one night that I was crossing a great plain accompanied by Doctor Brown, dressed as ever in his black morning-wear with a wing-collar and cravat held by a pin. He was a little out of breath as I turned and saw that a tiger was following us.

'We must run.'

'No you go ahead, I'm a little tired.'

'Please Doctor Brown, please try.'

'No Mr.Blake, I insist that you go on without me.'

The next morning I received a phone call that Doctor Brown could not meet me for my lesson. He had died suddenly in the night.

Myers Foggin had long realised that I had stopped writing music since I'd been at the Academy and was concerned about this as much as he had been about my piano playing. He was also concerned as to how I would make a living and kindly suggested that I might like to write some orchestral music for a library, giving me an introduction to Joseph Weinberger's music publishers in nearby Crawford Street. I didn't know quite what this meant but it was explained to me by the Director, Fred Benson, a wonderfully rough-diamond Londoner.

'All the documentary programmes you see or hear in the cinema or television or on the radio need music, and they mostly can't afford to commission new compositions, so we provide a catalogue of all the sorts of music that they might want. Clients come along and choose what's suitable and we provide a recording. If you compose us something you'll get a royalty every time it's played. Mr.Foggin has recommended you to us very highly and Miss Stephie Lengauer will discuss with you what we'd like.'

Stephie was from Austria, as was the original firm of Weinberger, and we hit it off right away. She had a delicious sort of 'Third man' accent.

'Ve need two pieces. First the Duke of Edinburgh is often filmed yachting and ve don't have a really beautiful zeazcape. Secondly zere is ze opening of Parliament in Zeptember and ve don't have a really good 'solemn' march. Ve have an orchestral recording booked in Stuttgart in about one month from now and ve'd like you to provide the scores. Ve copy out the parts and do everything else.'

'Why in Stuttgart?'

'The Musician's Union don't allow library music to be recorded in the UK.'

'Why not?'

'They won't accept a buyout fee and ve can't afford to run the firm if they insist on royalties for zeir members.'

'Can I go to the recording?'

'Vell I'm afraid ve couldn't pay for you to do zat.'

I would so much like to have been there since so far I'd never heard anything I'd written for orchestra.

'Would I get a copy of the record?'

'Yes you vould.'

That decided it and I composed two orchestral pieces: 'Remembrance March' and 'Blue sea and evening sky'. I regarded them as a joke. The march was like 'The Dam-Busters' upside down, backwards and at half-speed; the seascape was like tongue-in-cheek 'Daphnis and Chloe' made-to-measure, off-the-shelf. I collected the two 78 rpm disks when they were ready and much to my surprise they sounded pretty good. Both were used for the occasions intended and a good deal more.

I had put a cautious toe into the dangerous waters of 'commercial music.'

I received my first royalty cheque - for 7 pounds. I was so thrilled by this that I invited Elona out to a really good restaurant for the first time ever. At last I felt able to treat her properly. I told her about the recordings and proudly showed her the cheque.

'It's not for seven pounds, it's for seven shillings!'

At the end of July I left the Academy with a feeble LRAM and no idea what to do next. I spent what little money I had left from my grant on a week at the British Film Institute's Summer School in Eastbourne. It made me more than ever inclined to try and get into the film world although I had no idea how I would do so. During the autumn I continued to develop my grandiose schemes for creating a new film-based Gesamtkunstwerk and finished Book 6 of the 'philosophical notes'. My father politely enquired what I proposed to do and fairly firmly informed me that he did not intend to support me. I turned my mind at last to the idea of work and wrote letters to the BBC, to independent TV companies, to music publishers, opera companies, orchestras, arrangers, composers and anything else I could think of, getting one or two polite 'thank you for your inquiry' notes but nothing else.

TIN-PAN ALLEY

I wrote to Covent Garden conductor Sir John Hollingsworth who had once looked at some of my compositions and he said he would do what he could to help me. He suggested I visit a contact of his in Denmark Street. Harold was sitting behind a big shiny desk smoking a cigar. He wore large bejewelled cuff-links and a mohair suit.

'Sir John Hollingsworth suggested I come and see you.'

'What have you got?'

'Well I've brought along a suite for orchestra and some songs and piano pieces.'

'Have you got anything recorded I can listen to?'

'No.'

Harold's gaze flickered over my cheap overcoat starting to go threadbear at the edges. He sighed a little.

'I tell you what son, I'll give you a fiver to go away.'

Eight years later I accompanied Bernard Herrmann to the premiere of the film 'Twisted Nerve' at British Lion and the very same Harold oozed up to us through the champagne:

'We'd just adore to publish your score Mr. Herrmann.'

'Whadda you think of this guy,Howard? D'you know him?'

'I suggest we offer him a fiver to go away.'

THE ADELPHI

By November I had to do something and in desperation went to the Labour Exchange and talked to an operative with definite people skills:

'What line are you in?'

'I'm a film composer'

'I don't think we'd have much in that sort of area.'

'I play the piano.'

'The Adelphi Hotel have got a piano. They need a hall porter. How about that?'

'I could try it.'

'All right, you try it. See how you get on. £3 a week.'

The Adelphi was just along from the Albion overlooking the Fishmarket. I was given a waistcoat to wear and told to stand in a little cubby-hole and await eventualities.

The first person to come in was the great Irish actor Michael McLiammoir in a badly-fitting red wig, about to start in a one-man Oscar Wilde show at the Theatre Royal.

'Would you care to transport these humble belongings to my state-room? Number thirty eight I believe.'

'I dont think it'll be a state room sir.'

'Sadly.'

Next was an attractive blonde of about 30 or so intent on getting her money's-worth..

'Will you put my car in the garage?'

'I'm afraid I don't drive'

'You're not much use then are you?'

She was right. I found that I couldn't do any of the normal things that were asked of me- open a bottle of champagne - remember what drinks people had asked for - plug the TV in - mend a fuse- nothing.

The manager called me to his office.

'You don't seem entirely suited to this sort of work.'

'Well no I'm not.'

'You're obviously well-educated. What do you hope to do?'

'I'm hoping to write music for a living, possibly in films.'

'Well this job won't get you very far. How about taking a training-course in hotel management?'

'I think I'll stick to music sir.'

'We took you on for only two weeks?'

'Yes sir.'

PARIS CINEMA

In the Evening Argus there was an advert:

'Assistant projectionist wanted Paris Cinema.'

I looked in the Entertainments columns and they were running both parts of Eisenstein's 'Ivan the Terrible'. Wonder of wonders! I ran to New Street in a break and met Roy the chief projectionist. He was short-sighted and couldn't actually see the screen.

'How is your eyesight?'

'Fine.'

'You will need to do the focussing.'

'All right.'

'What experience do you have?'

'I've operated an 8mm. Bell and Howell cine-camera and been on a film course with the British Film Institute.'

'£4 a week.'

'OK.'

It wasn't nearly as easy one might think. At the end of my first night I laced up the little reel of The Queen on horseback and started the projector on cue. Unfortunately the reel had not been rewound and she appeared riding upside-down with a noise as of many machine-guns (the soundtrack being on the wrong side.)

The reels had to be spliced together from 1,000 feet into 2,000 feet reels and laced onto the machine ready for the changeover, a 4-frame dot scratched onto the top right-hand corner and easy to miss. While one reel was running one had to hand-wind the previous one onto a metal plate, holding it on with one's free hand to make sure that it didn't slip off and go all over the floor. But one night it did. I had stopped rewinding to go and check the arcs and the focus and went back to find that the rewind had gone on turning without me, great black festoons of 35mm film spilling all over the floor. Roy was out at the pub but Andy the other assistant came back from his break. As luck would have it he was new to the game as well, but with a decidedly adventurous streak.

'Roy's going to be very angry about this. I'll tell you what we do, we drop all the spare film through the trapdoor down to the usherettes changing rooms and it'll sort itself out.'

'Do you really think that'll...'

Too late. He'd thrown the lot over. Usherettes screamed, Roy appeared and chased after Andy threatening to kill us both, the manageress rushed up from the office horrified while the film kept inexorably unwinding.

It was a very late night for everybody.

Being a projectionist had wrought havoc with my social standing. Elona's father had become aware of it and said to his daughter:

'I absolutely forbid you to have any further association with a young man who works in the worst flea-pit in Brighton.'

He took the trouble to meet up with my father and explain to him that if I did not break off the connection 'his men would put me in hospital for the foreseeable future.' This didn't exactly stop us seeing each other but we certainly noted it as a deterrent.

In April Myers Foggin phoned my mother to say that the The Eric Coates Light Music Prize was in the offing and he strongly suggested that I should submit something. He thought I might be having a hard time and it was a cash prize. He had also had some interest expressed by Philip Pfaff at Chappell's whom I might like to contact.

My father had got pretty worried by Mr.Thomas and gave me another chance, thinking I'd be safer at home for a while. I gave up The Paris and dug up some short orchestral pieces from my schooldays. The strange thing was that the minute I started work on composition again I was happy as a sand-boy. I no longer had any academic pressure on me and I had nothing whatsoever to lose since I was at rock-bottom already!

I put together a suite for small orchestra. The first movement(1'25'')was a Pastorale which I sketched out in a matter of minutes, very English, with an oboe solo taken up by strings; the second movement (1'15'') was a jaunty little march leaning ever-so-slightly towards Prokofiev. The third movement (1'35'') dated back to 1955 and was called 'Interlude', a gentle clarinet solo over syncopated strings to which I added a middle section with solo flute and a somewhat lush recapitulation, while the Finale was new and more substantial lasting nearly 3 minutes. I called the work Four Miniatures and entered it for the prize.

Having gained some confidence from this I was delighted when Clive phoned out of the blue to ask if I would consider writing him something for piano and orchestra. He now had a TV programme called 'The Lythgoe Touch' and was also getting dates with light orchestras on BBC radio. He had come somewhat down-market since I first met him and wanted something which I suppose one should describe as 'schmaltzy'. I wrote Rhapsody for a Summer's Night in the tradition of the 'Warsaw Concerto' or 'Dream of Olwen' and he seemed thrilled, broadcasting it with Paul Fenoulhet and the BBC Revue Orchestra.

He had also recently taken up the five little children's pieces that I'd written for Doreen back in 1956 and when I rang Philip Pfaff at Chappell's Educational I mentioned them. He said he'd like to see them and I went up to Bond Street clutching various juvenilia. Wonderfully he agreed to publish Party Pieces as they were now renamed; Burlesca (for violin and piano) and Fantasy-Allegro (for piano trio).

But none of this thrilling surge of activity produced any money - no advances, no commission fees, no royalties. I was not a member of the Performing Rights Society as yet, having hardly scraped up the necessary six active published titles to qualify. The results of The Eric Coates prize had been announced - and I had not won it. I couldn't pay my parents any rent or upkeep and I had hardly the money to afford manuscript paper and postage. Meanwhile (with the emphasis on the 'mean') Elona's father was making ever more threatening noises. We sat down in our favourite coffee bar one night:

'I think you should go to live in London.'

'I can't afford it.'

'I'll lend you five pounds Howard.'

During June I played for rehearsals of 'The Boy Friend' and the choreographer, Leslie Placket, had very kindly said he could put me up if I needed it. I rang him and asked if I could sleep on his floor. His flat was in Notting Hill and maybe I could play for some more rehearsals? I played for one dance class but not to his satisfaction.

'You're too classical. You haven't got it!'

I looked through the small ads in The Evening Standard next day.

'Experienced assistant projectionist required National Film Theatre.'

I paid 6p return to Charing Cross and walked over to the South Bank. A man was working outside the building and I asked about the job. He explained that he was the Chief Projectionist:

'Have you had any experience?'

'Five years at the err.... Odeon Portslade'

'Forget it.'

I walked back along the river:

'Oi, come back!'

'I'll give you a week's trial for £8.00 and if you're any good I'll raise it to £10.10s. By the way, there isn't an Odeon in Portslade'

'Oh, sorry.'

'You must be dead keen to work here?'

'Yes.'

I had made a wish come true. Suddenly I was totally immersed in all types of cinema. I met and talked with visiting film directors and producers, cameramen and scriptwriters, critics and broadcasters. In that first year we were visited by Jean Renoir, Fritz Lang, Vincente Minelli, Jacques Tati and Luchino Visconti. I watched whole seasons of their work, recorded their speeches and sometimes made them cups of tea in the staff room. I had found an extraordinary way of getting a film education and making a living at the same time. I was still obsessed with music and film as an art form and my particular heroes were still Eisenstein and Prokofiev. A complete season of their work was just about to happen and here I was projecting it.

One day the government censor walked up to the projection box:

Stalwart pillars of society assembled, a splendid buffet table was set out and the Watch Committee began its difficult task of watching all the things which were about to be denied to the general public.

The Co-Chief projectionist was Alf Francis. He had a slightly humped back which he never mentioned and it didn't bother him. He hailed from Essex where he lived in Laingdon with his parents and he was always cheerful. Because of the war he had had very little education but was crazy about film, amazingly perceptive, highly practical and very witty. A Cockney.

'Why don't you come down and give me a hand at the weekend. I'm relaying the gas piping.'

'Yourself?'

'Well who else you got in mind?'

He owned a 16mm Bolex camera and liked to shoot film and we almost immediately started discussing whether we couldn't make one.

'We can borrow the lights from Warner Bros, get the processing done by Humphries on the back of a batch, Fred'll draw the credits and maybe we can get John Fletcher in to mix the sound. Neville will be my assistant and you can edit it yourself in the cutting-room. So what's the problem?

We started shooting on 12th November and shot every Sunday that we all had off. The Bolex was and still is a very good camera and we were delighted with the rushes which we could run on the big screen if nothing was happening. I learnt to lay up the negatives on A and B rolls ready for the processing with dissolves marked in and edge-numbers recorded. The 'story' was somehow not really the point of what I was doing. (I've never been very interested in stories and always been more interested in music.) It concerned a boy meeting a girl, having a love affair, growing restless and parting and unsurprisingly the lead roles were played by myself and Elona.

Malcolm Arnold was regarded as the most prominent of our film composers. Whilst at school in Brighton I had seen his ballet 'Solitaire' when the Sadler's Wells Ballet visited the Hippodrome and had been thrilled to realise that such beautiful music could be written by a young English composer. I greatly admired the overture 'Tam O'Shanter' and film scores like 'Hobson's choice' and 'Whistle down the wind'. I was thinking about the music that I might write for our own film and wondered one day if Malcolm Arnold could give me any advice. I received a characteristically energetic response:

'I would be very interested to see some of your work and to meet you when I have seen this. Perhaps you would be good enough to send me something?'

I sent a package including the 'Four Miniatures for orchestra' and received:

'Thank you for letting me see your music which I like very much. I think you would do very well in film music. I am extremely busy for the next week but I would very much like to meet and will certainly give you all the help I can.'

He invited me to the Saville Club and we had lunch. He was larger than life, exuding good will, enthusiasm and happiness, delighted that his talents were so appreciated by society - as leading film composer of the day and with his many works being widely performed. He was generous with his advice and information as I have discovered few people are, and it was perhaps this very openness and generosity that gradually made him a target for the small-minded and the envious. The way that the BBC and arts organizations in Britain slowly turned their backs on him has been copiously documented, not least in Tony Palmer's coruscating film biography shortly before his death.

I met him many times in the intervening years and remained steadfast in my admiration of his work. Twice we shared the same agent: first Liz Keys at London Management in the sixties, whose speciality was film, and later Georgina Ivor, who helped him with his symphonic works in the eighties and nineties. She sent me one day a score of his Ninth Symphony, which Faber Music and the BBC had refused to consider. Although sparsely-written and somewhat bleak I believed it should be performed and wrote a letter in its defence, out of which a first performance was achieved with Sir Charles Groves, causing its belated recognition.

'You've got to get this work performed, Georgina! It's not like his other works. It's very sparse and meditative, but it will work fine. It should be played! If nobody will do it, it's the sort of thing you could do in the Roundhouse and have young people all sitting on the floor meditating! You must put it on! It's a very significant work. It's from the deep inner recesses of Malcolm.'

In his later life he was worn down by what he saw as rejection and this sometimes resulted in remarks that were abrasive or downright rude. But he saw himself as a character, an eccentric artist beleagured by Philistine society, the Gulley Jimson of music, and was not seeking to cause offence, rather to portray himself as a rascally rough-diamond fighting the snares of the ungodly. To me he was an inspiration. He proved that one could write glorious melodic music despite the opposition of the establishment and that one should never give up.

Our little film was nearing completion and I composed the music and wrote a stream-of-consciousness voice-over recorded by Elona. John and Marlene Fletcher who ran a documentary company off Wardour Street had got excited by the phenomenon of projectionists making a film and wanted to help. I persuaded a flautist, clarinettist and harpist from the RAM to record the music and John, using about six different in-house tape recorders mixed all the tracks directly onto the main house's 16mm projector using a magnetic stripe. We had a master print and took it to the BFI for approval. We were greatly surprised when they offerred to buy it from us and give it a showing in the NFT. It was named A Few Days and lasted about 20 minutes. It was black and white and they showed it as a short, somewhat oddly with 'The Maltese Falcon' in NFT 1 on 25th April. Once I had made this film as an experiment I curiously didn't feel nearly so interested in doing another. I had almost given up music since I'd joined the NFT but now I started to miss it desperately. Sometimes I would play the piano in the theatre during the lunch-hour and staff would come in and listen and say:

'What on earth are you doing here working as a projectionist?'

I had started to wonder myself. I had enjoyed being at the NFT so much because it was like a family. It had taught me lots of skills which I had totally lacked and I had been happier than I had been since my childhood, yet somehow my major interest was still music, in which I felt I needed to go much, much further. BFI Directors James Quinn and Stanley Reid came to see the film and offerred me a grant to become a film director. Richard Roud and David Robinson joined in praise of it, but I started to feel pressured. I had done what I set out to do- to determine whether making films as a director was my real metier. I had decided that it wasn't, because I wasn't really sufficiently interested in visuals or stories.

Ghan Shyam Singh Birla had warned me:

'You have a tendency to take something for a little while, and after reaching a certain stage of accomplishment, you like to switch your attention to a different direction. Please be aware of that.'

However the admonition carried on to say:

'Your wonderful traits of inventive, imaginative, creative art of music should not be allowed to be withered away by trying circumstances, which are simply given as new steps for you own unfoldment.'

Perhaps the whole departure into film had been a detour from the main road? Samuel Weir had said:

'You are a little too ready to alter your life at short notice and have little fear of doing so.'

Quite by chance in the foyer one evening I ran into Dody (Thorunn Johansdottir Tryggvaason)with Vladimir Ashkenazy who was now her husband. He was dying to see 'Ivan the Terrible', which had been for long banned in the USSR and I told him that unfortunately they had just missed a public showing, but if he would like me to I could organise a viewing on 16mm in my flat. Dody asked me:

'How can you do that Howard? Do you work here?'

'Yes I work here as a projecionist.'

'Have you given up music?'

'Well not entirely. I wrote some for a little film I made not long ago.'

'Don't you play the piano any more?'

'Not really.'

'What a shame.'

I borrowed 'Ivan' from the BFI library along with a projector and on 21st November invited a crowd of friends round for 'Beer and Eisenstein'. We ran both parts complete and the Ashkenazys were entranced. Vladimir sat down at the piano afterwarsds and played some of Prokofiev's themes back by ear. As they left Dody said:

'You should get back to the piano and music Howard.'

I felt I should too but didn't know how. I still couldn't 'give up my day-job'.

I was so thrilled to have met and entertained such a great pianist that I wrote a piece to celebrate the event - the first 'classical' piece I had written for a long time. It was for the piano, romantic and decidedly Russian and I called it Prelude in B minor, later re-titled 'Romanza' and becoming one of the items in Lifecycle.

If I went to one of his concerts I would go and say 'hello' afterwards and it happened that in 1974 I went to his brilliant all-Scriabin recital at the QEH. Afterwards he casually said to me:

'Why don't you write some 'entertaining' piano pieces that the public would enjoy?'

Back at the mill I wrote 12 piano pieces . Much later (in 1995) I added a second book of twelve and named the whole collection of 24 pieces in all the major and minor keys: 'Lifecycle'. They are dedicated to him.

I couldn't go on much longer as a projectionist since my whole reason for being there had more or less faded out. I wanted to play music again, somewhere, anywhere. I decided one night that I would devote the rest of my life absolutely to music and nothing else, however difficult it might be and however lowly. It would be better to play in the street than not play at all. I saw an ad in Melodymaker for a pianist at a country club outside Croydon for £4 a night. I had now got a driving license and I drove out on an evening off and played. I took selections from South Pacific and suchlike but it didn't please the owner.

'You're too classical. You haven't got it'

It cost me more than £4 to hire the car but this time I didn't give up. I saw another ad in the Melodymaker for the 'Chiswick Jazz Piano School' and booked a lesson, at the same time giving in my notice at the NFT.

I was the Fool in the Tarot jumping gaily off the cliff- but I felt good about it!

'The Chiswick Jazz Piano School' was in fact two rooms over a shop. Norton , a man of about thirty, married with a wife and children who lived upstairs, offerred young girls the wonderful 'opportunity' to 'audition on TV'. He had a closed circuit camera and a monitor screen on which they could see themselves. He would then tell them their 'potential' on a convenient sofa in the 'control room'. He said he played in West End clubs and mentioned The Astor and The Celebrity.

'All you have to do is learn to think on the off-beat and beat your foot on it. Then you learn all the popular standards and play them. Start with 'Lady is a tramp' and then carry on with all the ones on this list.'

The list and the information cost me £4 but I went away and practised. I returned for a second lesson for £4 one week later and dutifully played my worked-up version of 'Lady is a tramp' whereupon he said:

'There's a job going in a pub in the Edgware Road but I don't really have the time to undertake it.'

This caused my eyebrows to raise but that evening I went to the Lord Chancellor pub in Frampton Street and met Harry Penning the landlord who took me on.

I was playing again!

During the day I learnt tunes, taking them from 'busking books' and sheet music or writing them down from the radio and records. Some nights the customers would stand up and sing with a microphone and shout or laugh at me for not knowing a tune, but I'd say 'I'll play it for you tomorrow' and I would. It was relaxed and uncritical and I was nobody at all. It paid more than being a projectionist and gave me all day to work on my music. As I got better the pub filled with people and Harry took on a drummer called Johnny and a guitarist/singer called Bernie at the weekends when the pavements outside got so crowded that you couldn't move.

Johnny found a late-night job in Queensway where I'd play the piano week-nights and he'd join me at weekends. I went there and met the irascible Viennese Sammy Frey who showed me the piano in the basement 'nightclub'.

'You may start.'

'But there's nobody here.'

'Well they might hear you and come in! Start!'

I visited Chappell's and met Jonathan Dyer.

'We haven't heard from you for years. What have you been up to?'

'Ive been working at the NFT and making a film.

'What's the music of it like?'

'Well it's scored for flute, clarinet and harp'

'Can we see it? Perhaps you can adapt it?'

I turned it into a 3-movement trio making the harp part for piano (optional harp) and writing a third movement - Allegro. The music from my little film 'A Few Days' suddenly became 'educational', published as Trio for flute, clarinet and piano!

'I have an opportunity for you to play at a top West-End night club.'

Norton was on the phone.

'Only one night, but you must wear a smart DJ and play solo piano very tastefully.'

I bought a sedcond-hand dinner jacket and bow tie for the occasion and reported to the band leader. I was nervous.

'Play nice and quiet for half an hour till we come back.'

'Yes Mr. Sonelli.'

'Sonny Lee.'

'Ah.'

The club was dimly lit with shaded table lights and diners in evening dress. I launched into 'Some enchanted evening'. I had only just about reached the middle eight when an obviously very drunk young man of gangster-like appearance lurched up onto the platform with me. His shirt was open to the waist and he had a large fairly recent knife-scar down one cheek.

'Lady is a tramp'

'Sorry?'

'I'm gonna sing.'

'Oh, well I'm not sure about that. I think perhaps you should ask the band leader, Mr.Sonnelli.'

A very large and very well-dressed man rather like George Sanders appeared beside me.

'Yes of course.' (in beautifully rounded accents) 'I will go and ascertain his view.'

'Thank you.'

He returned to say that consent had been graciously granted.

I played 'Lady is a tramp' and his punk-friend sang abominably, shouting through the microphone.

I returned rapidly to 'Some enchanted evening' but he wasn't to be deterred.

'Now I wanna sing 'I get a kick outa you.'

'I don't think that's such a good idea.'

The very large man grabbed me by the throat deftly pulling a flick-knife from somewhere. His accent and demeanour had changed.

'Fuckin' play it or I'll cut yer fuckin' 'ead orf!'

Fortunately I knew it.

I now had the time to follow up some of the contacts Malcolm had suggested. I visited a singers' agent called Norman McCann who was very helpful and recommended me to a publisher called Richard Frank (Anglo-Continental in Tottenham Court Road).

'He's a serious musician and won't rip you off, and if you write good music he'll help you.'

I met him on May 6th, he was Polish/Jewish and had been the conductor/musical director of the ballet company in Krakow before the war.

'We were on tour in Russia in 1939 and heard the war had broken out. There were two buses leaving at once, both at the end of long avenues of piled snow, one going East, one going West. We had to decide instantly. I ran like a madman and just caught the bus going East, travelling on to Shanghai and then to England. The ones who went West died. Show me some of your music.'

I showed him the 'Rhapsody for a Summer's Night' and he thought he could get Semprini to do it, which he did. He liked the 'Four Miniatures' too and was able to place them with some of the BBC orchestras.

'Why don't you write something big, a symphonic movement with brass and full woodwind, a tone-poem or an overture, something exciting and interesting. I don't understand why you aren't writing. You write really well. What's the matter with you?! Why don't you get on with it?!'

Nobody had ever talked to me like that or got excited enough to demand some new music from me. I started very laboriously to work on a single-movement piece for full orchestra Movement for Orchestra which would be descriptive of London, like a tone-poem. Richard became my mentor and guide. He insisted that I should work intensively on composition. I took some of the first orchestrated sketches to show him and he laughed with a gutteral roar from the throat:

'It's so feeble! So apologetic! So English! Look here, this is double forte, you want it to be loud, bold- and what's it scored for? Four woodwind! Hopeless! It should be on full brass in unison. Do it again!'

I went home and worked on it.

'Better' he'd say and smile. 'Better.'

Harry Penning was doing very well, the Lord Chancellor was making money. He had put in a stage and lighting and wanted to improve the sound and volume of the band.

'There's a new thing called a 'Mellotron' Howard. It can play all the sounds of all the instruments. It's like an organ and I'd like us to go and look at it.'

In a show-room off Park Lane we met Eric Robinson, distinguished conductor of 'Music for You' on the BBC, whose project it was.

'Harold will demonstrate the instrument for you.'

Harold turned it on and the introduction sounded as if it was played by the whole Nelson Riddle Orchestra (which in fact it was). Then the tune of 'Lover' came in as if on the strings of Mantovani (which in fact it was).

'Wouldn't you like to have one of those Howard?'

'Can I just try it?'

Eric looked a little dubious.

'It takes some time and training to master.'

'Well, I'd just like to understand how it works.'

The machine consisted of thousands of small flexible metal tapes with a note or phrase of well-known orchestras and soloists recorded on them. I tried playing 'Lover' myself and it worked brilliantly because there is a major chord on each first beat, so that if one plays the bass note of each chord the machine engages satisfactorily. However as I soon discovered, if the chord changes on a different beat or note of the bar or if the key changes, the machine can't deal with it and total chaos ensues. When I did this everybody laughed uproariously - except that is for Eric Robinson.

'We would be pleased to fund you for a training course Mr. Blake.'

Peter Sellers, who had always wanted to play the piano, had come there and heard 'Lover', thought it fantastic and ordered three machines to be delivered, one to a yacht in the Mediterranean. As it turned out the only tune that he had ever wanted to play was Antonio Carlos Jobim's 'Desafinado' ('Slightly out of tune' appropriately enough) and the machine absolutely refused to play it. The tune is one of the most subtle themes both harmonically and rhythmically. The three machines were returned. I said to Harry:

'If I've got to play an organ I'd have to have a proper one that can play everything.'

'All right. I'll buy you one.'

A Hammond M100 with pedal-keyboard was installed on the platform in the pub and everybody seemed to like it. It was about 10 million light years away from St.Augustine's and Cesar Franck's 'Chorale Prelude in A minor' but I could play the organ and the skill was to prove useful.

I visited Norman Mead, head of the music arranging department of the BBC in the Aeolian Hall in Bond Street.

'Can you score for big band and orchestra?'

'I don't know. I haven't ever done that, but maybe I could.'

This was not well-received.

'Who do you regard highly in the field of big-band scoring?'

'Quincy Jones. I think he's brilliant.'

This was even worse-received.

'I'll give you a Sinatra tune to score - 'You're nobody till somebody loves you'- but I can't promise anything.'

I took it away and scored it as well as I knew how and he flicked through it.

'Nobody scores trombones in the tenor clef any more.'

'Ah.'

'We'll let you know.'

I never heard anything more, but not so much later I got to work with Quincy Jones.

Not content with just an organ in the evenings Harry decided to acquire the celebrated Hungarian violinist Tibor Kunstler to play lunchtimes. He had been the star at Quaglino's for many years, but since The Beatles such recherche features of London's nightlife were all but gone, Tibor being a major casualty. Since the main clientele at that time of day tended to be refuse-operatives I was doubtful as to the likelihood of success. We talked about music and played a little.

'You play really well. I'll bet you know the Cesar Franck Sonata?'

Since nobody was in the pub we played the first two movements of it - utterly surreal. Cesar Franck was not as many light years away as I had thought.

Some dustmen came in and Tibor's face lit up, old showman that he was.

'Autumn leaves - A minor. I will play the tables.'

'I'm not sure that's a...'

But he had started and he played exquisitely as only someone who has 'brought a night of candle-lit romance to a million lovers' could. A white-haired 20-stone refuse-operative in grubby T-shirt and trainers stood at the bar and Tibor sidled up, playing himself towards him and smiling from beneath the brilliantine.

'Bugger off yer big poof' he said.

Harry had bought a hotel in the Canaries and his idea was to take us all out there with me as musical director. I would live in a chalet by the sea, drive a Mercedes, have as many girls as I liked, and never want to come back. Silly man that I am I still wanted to 'make it' in London, I still wanted to compose and I still didn't want to be too far away from Elona.

I refused.

It was suggested to me that I talk to a top London music publisher. Maybe they would publish the numbers for the solo album? I was introduced to the director of the firm.

'We'd like to sign you as a song-writer, son.'

'Gosh, really?'

You're an EMI artist, you ought to have a publisher representing your interests.'

'Well, I've never thought of myself as a song-writer, not of pop-songs anyway. I actually trained as a classical composer.'

'That's OK son, that doesn't matter. We'll sign you for two years. Here's the contract.'

I signed. Dave said he'd like to write lyrics for me. In fact, although I'd started playing on lots of rock and pop records I wasn't really much interested in them and wasn't at all sure I could write this sort of thing. But after my years away from music I felt I should try everything at least once. Give it a go. We sat down and worked on his titles:

'And it looks like rain'

'I can't love her half as much'

'Mailin' my letter'

'Black Velvet'

'It's not me'

This last expressed my views about the proceedings - but I needn't have worried. We went into a recrding studio and 'demoed' them. I rang up.

'I've got some songs for you.'

'So what?'

'Wouldn't you like to hear them?'

'No son.'

'Why not? You've signed me up as a song-writer.'

'We just want to collect the publishing royalties off your solo album.'

'That's preposterous.'

'Listen son, you can't just sit down and write hit songs. You have to listen to everything that's going on, take bits of it from everywhere and stick it together in the right order. Then you get a great title and make some money. OK?'

'Well how do you know I couldn't do that?'

'Well why do you think I'd want you to do that?'

'Because you've signed me as a songwriter.'

'Yes, but I can do it myself and make twice the money.

'Well, will you let me out of the contract?'

'No son.'

I had turned down leisure and luxury in the Canaries but I still needed to play for a living. I decided to buy myself a Hammond organ on HP, had it sawed in half and had a revolving Leslie-style speaker made for me by Watkins. The sound had suddenly become popular due mostly to the great Jimmy Smith and sawing it in half meant that it could be transported and would fit in the back of my second-hand Vauxhall Victor Estate. I thought this would get me some work and it did. I played in clubs, pubs, bands, dance-halls, cabarets, one-night stands, pop concerts, military bases and sometimes recording studios. I was playing with an ad hoc band in the Ad Lib club in Leicester Square when a voice behind me said:

'Why are you playing with this band?'

'I'm trying to make a living.'

'How would you like to do an audition at Abbey Road?'

'With this band?'

'No just you.'

'Hang on a minute.'

I sat down with him. His name was David Paramor and everybody knew that EMI was run by Norrie Paramor. I went to Abbey Road Studios next morning and met Laurie Gold who hired the musicians. He sat me down at a piano and gave me music to read, some fully written-out, some with just chord symbols. He asked me to improvise a bit and play different styles.

'Do you want do some recording?'

'Yes I'd love to.'

He booked me to play piano on 'Thank you very much'. The lead singer was Mike McGeer and his brother Paul McCartney was playing the tambourine. Everybdy was very cheery. The bass-guitarist was John Paul Jones and had a blonde Beatles haircut. He said he'd been at Westminster Choir School - probably not that long ago. I asked him if it was fun to do sessions.

'No, I'm going to start a band with Jimmy Page specially for America and we're going to make lots of money.'

'What are you going to call it?'

'Led Zeppelin.'

'That's a good name. What sort of music?'

'LOUD MUSIC.'

EMI was the epicentre of the most gigantic success-story in the history of popular music and dozens of singles a week were being turned out. Most of them needed session musicians and playing on them was like joining a club. The same players would turn up everywhere - Pye, Phillips, Decca, Advision, Olympic, Nova, CTS, Angel, Levy's, Lansdowne- the list of working studios grew and grew. The top players were brilliant at what they did - unsung stars within a closed community: Jim Sullivan who read books on astonomy as he played, dreaming up the most brilliant guitar 'grooves' on everything you heard; the introspective John McLaughlin who went off to reinvent himself as Mahavishnu and win USA Best Guitar awards, Barry Morgan a virtuoso Latin-American percussionist who was to found his own studio, drummers like Ronnie Stevenson and Ronnie Verrall, Clem Cattini and Ginger Baker, trumpeters like Kenny Baker and Derek Watkins, flautists like Chris Taylor and Ray Swinfield. Work swirled around us like a flood with hardly the time to think what one was playing and who one was playing for.

I went along with the flow.

David Paramor signed me to make a solo album on the Studio 2 label. He wanted most of the tracks to be famous standard songs and wanted to call it 'Hammond in Percussion'. I would play and write all the arrangements, compose two or three of the numbers and experiment with multi-tracking myself on several instruments.

Stanley Myers wrote the tongue-in-cheek and decidedly over the top sleeve-note.

'He's a composer, (Theme from H and Shark are by him): an arranger (his version of 'Yesterday' is surely the most original yet); a concert pianist (listen to his spectacular performance of the 'Exodus' theme); and probably the swingingest organist this country has produced ('Gravy Waltz' and 'Dace' shouild convince you of that. He also plays vibes, marimba, celeste and 'jangle-box'. The word is versatile'....

I met Stanley Myers because I sometimes parked the organ in a night-club in Holland Park Road pending engagements. He had been to look at the club as a possible location for a film on which he was Musical Director. Rather like the props director in 'Sunset Boulevard' he was interested in the machine rather than the person. He phoned:

'I understand this organ belongs to you.'

'Yes.'

'Could we hire it for a film?'

'Sure'.

'Do you know how it works?'

'Yes of course.'

'Could you come over and show us?'

He was interested in 'funky' and I went over and played some typical 'funky licks' a la Jimmy Smith.

'Gosh that's terrific. Could you possibly write down some of those phrases so that I get them into a score?'

'Yes I could do that.'

'Do you know anybody who could play like that on this film session?'

'Well I could if you want me to.'

So began a friendship of nearly 30 years, endlessly talking about music, films, publishers, books, politics, injustices, literature and girls...all of which he seemed to have at some time dated. We went to concerts of Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen,John Williams, The Thad Jones Mel Lewis Band....everything in the world interested him.

I played on many film sessions for him and greatly admired his scores, which were deft, witty, intelligent and often very beautiful. He had read PPE at Balliol and never intended to be a musician but whilst at Oxford had begun to play piano for undergraduate reviews, suddenly becoming MD for a tour of 'Espresso Bongo' with Paul Schofield and dropped into the musical world at the deep end. He was ever aware and ready to admit the gaps in his knowledge. He rang me once having just landed a film which required a full string section:

'Howard, where the hell do I put the violas?'

I played for one of Stanley's recordings at CBS Studios in Portland Street and met his music contractor David Katz.

'Stanley tells me you can play anything.'

'Well I play the piano and the organ and write music'.

'But Stanley tells me you can also play things like marimba and vibraphone and even a bit of percussion?'

'Well I've just done an LP for EMI that's like that, yes.'

Stanley had landed 'Kaleidoscope' with Warren Beatty and David wanted to book me to play something like 24 different instruments on it. MU rules were one fee per player with doubling for each extra instrument which worked out cheaper than booking 24 players. Not that I think this was in Stanley's mind. He just liked to use lots of different sounds.

I was part of a big band of 30 or so and some of the dour, beady-eyed session players from the Ted Heath era watched me with suspicion. But I pulled it off and David Katz phoned me again:

'Richard Harris, lovely, lovely actor but can't sing a note and wants to be King Arthur in 'Camelot' and he's gone completely mad and paid for his own screen test at Pinewood so you've just got to drop everything and get up to Hanover Studios, Hanover Square and teach him the songs and then go down to Pinewood with him and play the piano and get him the job'

Richard arrived in a black Rolls Royce in denims and an Irish tweed cap signing shop girls' autographs even as he was getting out of the car.

'Oh the pity of it - the pity of it all!'

He had a splendid voice which he loved to use and up the stairs and into the rehearsal room he was delivering lines from plays and orations with resonant abandon. I took out 'How to handle a woman' and put it on the piano.

'HOW - TO - HANDLE - A - WOMAN' he roared, with anguish and ferocity and high drama. This wouldn't do at all.

I thought about it.

'Sit down and put your head between your legs...now breathe out...don't move...keep still...breathe out...yes...relax...now... as quietly as you possibly can...sing...and out came the sweetest little tenor voice imaginable:

'How to handle a woman...'

perfectly in tune and utterly beguiling and we learnt the songs using it. He had no idea he owned such a voice, but we took it down to Pinewood and presented it to Joshua Logan and he got the part.

Malcolm Arnold's agent for film scores was Liz Keys at London Management and I went to see her. She had an astounding roster of composers which included Aaron Copland, Bernard Herrmann, William Walton, Herbert Spenser and Richard Rodney Bennett. I wasn't writing much but she seemed interested in my piano-playing and thought I might be useful.

The brothers Lew Grade and Bernard Delfont owned the firm and put on Sunday shows in Yarmouth, Torquay and Bournemouth. They represented comedians like Tommy Cooper, Dave Allan, Frankie Howerd and Morecombe and Wise. I drove down to the Winter Gardens and found myself on stage playing virtually the whole time, afternoon and evening for £7. Back-stage it was pitch-dark and hard to see what was going on.

'You're on.'

'Where's the piano?'

'It's out there.'

'Who's on?'

'Just get out there.'

The Steinway must be somewhere but I couldn't find it. All the lights went up and I was standing centre-stage with Morecombe and Wise. There was no piano.

'What are you doing?'

'Playing the piano.'

'There's no piano here. Look for yourself.'

'I'm sorry, I'll get off.'

Oh, no, no, no. You stay here.'

They made a comedy routine around me and the more awkward and embarassed I got the more the audience laughed.

In early September a 'West-End-organist/MD' asked if I would deputise for him for a week at a club just off Regent Street. He assured me that it was well-run with a high-class clientele - which was in a sense true. I met him in a dingy basement in Cork Street and talked through the music.

'The Colonel will give you the signal to start and the cast will enter. You just play the whole pad without stopping from end to end.'

It seemed simple enough. I arrived about 7.30 and played polite cocktail music. The basement was transformed in the evening with pretty opera boxes with chandeliers, red velvet curtains and little round golden tables. On signal I launched into the show music. The top of the organ was on a level with the tiny stage onto which suddenly burst 24 absolutely gorgeous 20-year old girls, totally naked except for high heels and a garter round one thigh. I lost the place and the girls all turned and giggled at me. The colonel glared from the wings, indicating that I'd better keep my eyes strictly on the music and when they went off cautioned me:

'If I catch you anywhere near any of my girls you will be in severe danger of getting beaten up.'

They were his investment. A few minutes later they started to appear again, now in haute couture ball gowns. In the opera boxes sat millionaire elder- statesmen, each of whom had chosen a lady to join him for dinner.

'Third from the right please Colonel.'

Two very well-known young ladies had worked there - Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler.

'Liza Shane' was really Hazel Collinson and had taken over from Barbra Streisand in 'Funny Girl'. I was asked if I would accompany her and be part of 'creating an act' with show-biz director Billy Rose. She wanted to try it in some Sunday concerts for Bernard Delfont and then do a 3-week solo season at the Pigalle. The first concert was in Yarmouth. She and her husband seemed pleased and invited me over to their tiny top-floor flat in Belsize Park.

'We've got another concert in Torquay with Roy Hudd. I've got Dirk Bogarde's Rolls-Royce, midnight blue with white upholstery. Would you like to drive us down in it and make the sandwiches?'

'I'm not good at sandwiches.'

I made Bovril-and-lettuce which did not go down well. We went to tea with Bernard Delfont's mother.

'My son Bernie's bought 125 cinemas. What does he want with all those cinemas?

I didn't really know who Peter was but gathered he was involved with advertising and films. He liked the fact that I know a lot about films.

'Who directed 'The Hill'?'

'Sidney Lumet. Listen I'm sorry about the sandwiches, why don't you come over for dinner?'

As a joke I put together some spoof commercials on my tape recorder, double-tracking piano and loony commentaries. Peter was not amused.

'The sandwiches were bad enough.'

But next day I had a call from an advertising agency who asked if I'd like to write something for them: Picador Cigars for Masius Wynne-Williams, two at 15 seconds each. Peter had directed them. I asked David Katz if he could book some singers and players:

'Love to darling.'

I set the text for three tenors, three trombones, bass guitar and drums:

When men get together there's Picador there, 'Cos Picador's great anytime anywhere.

Well it wasn't exactly great poetry but perhaps William Blake would have forgiven me:

Eternity is in love with the productions of time, he had said.

The next week I wrote 3 scores for Camay for solo acoustic guitar, french horn and string quartet - chamber music for scented soap; a week later 3 for the Co-op, composed for big band a la Quincy Jones- jazz flute, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, string bass and drums. The players were fantastic: Kenny Baker, Stan Roderick, Derek Watkins, Kenny Clare - the best.

Not only was it terrific fun but I was getting paid for it and this fact did not escape Liz Keys who sorted out the business for me.

The Pigalle was a big floorshow-restaurant which sported a full stage-facility with band and resident dance company. Liza and I did two spots a night there and two in the Society restaurant which backed on to it into Jermyn Street,later becoming 'Tramps'. We had Sunday off and returned on Monday for the second week. But what was this? Outside on Piccadilly was a large billboard:

'DINAH WASHINGTON WITH 25-PIECE BIG BAND'

The posters for Liza in the lobby had disappeared and standing there was the owner and very unamused comedian Al Burnett:

'They've taken me over.'

'Who have?'

'Mafia. Overnight they've brought in dozens of one-arm bandits and gambling tables and roulette and blackjack and their own band and singer and compere, everything. We've had it, go home, we're all done for!'

Peter arrived at this moment and had Al explain it again.

'You're not doing that to my lady.'

'There's nothing we can do about it?'

'Oh yes there is.'

He picked up a phone and rang the head of police Special Branch, getting through instantly. Who on earth was this man with Dirk Bogarde's Rolls-Royce and such amazing connections? Within 10 minutes the whole place was teeming with police. We were told to go ahead with the show, although the American one would run alongside us until they'd 'sorted out the paperwork.' We were not to go out of the club on our own without a police escort and we must report any threats immediately.

The penny-flicker was removed from the Colony club in Berkeley Square and extradited. Frank Sinatra's 'valet' was requested to reliquish his penthouse suite at the Playboy Club and return to the States. The take-over of London's nightlife was evidently prevented, an event little known. 'Ol Blue-eyes' sued the BBC for reporting him to be mafia and was said to have been awarded £100,000 damages for libel.

Peter had grown up in a Dr.Barnardo home as an orphan but was immensely bright and gifted. It's not so well known that Noel Coward gave time and money to this charity but it was his philanthropy that caused him to spot Peter there and help him. After army service in Malaya Peter worked in a Dublin theatre as ASM and then as director and this led him towards television and commercials in London. Few would have foreseen the colossal forward-leap which led to his making 'The Italian Job', but it must have been through Peter's connection that Noel uniquely agreed to act in it, a phenomenon which surely must have helped the financing. Peter's first step towards features had happened with a film called 'Penthouse', a film laced with a good deal more sex and sadism than had been allowd up till then . Peter asked me down to Twickenham one day to talk about doing the film score and we were joined by the British Film Censor who I'd met before.

'It's about a beautiful model trapped in her luxury penthouse by a sexually-deranged psychopath.'

'Splendid.'

'Obviously we can't show everything.'

'Why not?'

'Well we need to respect your censorship rules and so on.'

'Come now Peter, we're in the Sixties, we're all grown-up people. I'd love to see the script!'

I wasn't sure I liked the direction this was taking and when I said that I'd have to 'run it past my agent' Peter got annoyed and the score was done instead by bass-player Johnny Hawkesworth, although by a coincidence I then found myself booked to play piano on it!

Maggie Sarragne was Mrs.Donald Campbell's stage name, a cabaret-singer who lived in a pretty little cottage in St John's Wood. I flew up to Aviemore with her and Dave Allan to do a one-night cabaret show.

'Would you let me read you palm.'

'If you like.'

She looked intently at my hand for a long time.

'You should be phenomenally succesful according to your palm. You are starred and double-starred and triple-starred, and you will eventually be recognised for what you are, but it will take you your whole long life to arrive.'

'That's not very encouraging.'

'I think it's wonderful and you're very lucky. Has anyone else told you the same thing?'

'Yes.'

(Robert Louis Stevenson said 'To travel is better than to arrive.' but it's not really what you want to hear.)

'The Avengers' was starting a new series at Elstree and David Katz asked if I'd like to play on the series. The composer/conductor was the famous Laurie Johnson and the orchestra were his own hand-picked favourites including a pianist who had played for him for many years. However David had suggested that adding an organ sound might be a good contemporary addition and Laurie agreed. I could also play harpsichord and marimba and so on which would give colour.

It was said to be the most succesful TV series running in the world at that time and reputedly shown in 192 countries. I didn't know there were that many. The stars were Patrick McNee and Diana Rigg. I played a 3-hour session for Laurie on October 15th and then a whole day of title sessions for the start of the new series on the 18th. In an amazingly short time I'd made it to the top of the session profession.

But I wasn't well.

For some long time I had had bad colds and catarrh and toothaches, and my health hadn't improved by working consistently all day and all night. My doctor had diagnosed four impacted wisdom teeth and an NHS hospital bed was found at St.George's Tooting for November 9th. It should only take a day which would be fine. The next Avengers recording was not until 15th when Laurie had written an episode specially featuring my playing. I would have to be there for that because musicians are just never ill.

All the others in the ward had gone by the end of the first day but I was still there the next day, and the next and the next. The operation had gone wrong and I was bleeding internally, my face had puffed up and gone yellow and blue reminding the nurses of Henry VIII on a bad day. I was still there on 14th and told that under no circumstance could I leave.

But I got up and left. At last I had gained a career and there was no way on earth that I was going to throw it away.

I arrived at Elstree and tried to grin cheerfully at the gate-man.

'Who are you?'

'You know me. Howard. Avengers.' - I could barely talk.

'Don't recognise you mate. You can't come in.'

'I have to... look you can see it's my car... and my musical instruments...and I always wear this leather jacket...'

'Mmmmm, OK.'

I was in and there were my friends.

'My God what's the matter with you? You look like Henry VIII.'

I played the session and survived!

Richard Frank decided that 'Movement for Orchestra' was completed to the satisfaction of both of us. It was now an 'impressive' (to me at any rate) 12-minute work for full orchestra. I tried out different names for it: 'Symphony in one movement' or 'Impressions of a city', but 'Movement for orchestra' seemed established. It was long before computerised music-printing and I fair-copied its 69 pages onto 25-stave transparencies through thick, wax-coated, yellow paper and proudly presented it to Richard. He beamed:

'If the BBC don't like this, they won't like anything!'

Some small corner of mind had clung onto the idea that I might somehow still be able to instate myself with them as a composer.

They sent it back without comment.

'Well, they have to be right, they are the authority and I don't have the sort of talent which they recognise. I must be grateful that my gifts are being recognised in the world of recording sessions. People often said, and say:

'If Mozart was alive today he'd be writing film music.'

If playing and writing on demand was what Mozart would have done, it should be good enough for me. It was only Wagner who had posed as God and demanded total obsequience. Mozart took every job offerred and turned it into something wonderful. I should just accept what I was, settle down and do the same. Everything I did would be to the best of my ability.

In fact, although the BBC were uninterested, 'Movement for Orchestra' was to move my career forward by a huge degree. Liz Keys introduced me to the Bernard Herrmann who asked what I was writing. I showed him the score of 'Movement for orchestra' and he was impressed. So much so that, when Laurie Johnson needed a composer to take over the scoring of 'The Avengers', he recommended me.

I was reading Joyce Cary's great comic novel on the problems of being an English artist. Gulley Jimson is recognised by arts connoisseurs world-wide as the greatest living painter yet he cannot make a living from it and no-one will help him. He's in trouble with the police, with former wives, agents, dealers, tax inspectors and the local council. His mind is always on art and ever quoting Blake whose transcendent mind mirrors his own:

Five windows light the caverned man;through one he breathes the air Through one he hears music of the spheres; through one can look And see small portions of the eternal world.

I always thought I'd like to write an opera on it and when I composed 'The Snowman' my sound editor was John Cary, the grandson of the author. I asked him if the rights were available but he said they'd been bought out by an American, so often the case.

Weinberger's had asked me if I'd like to write a complete album of background music and play and record it as well and I leapt into this with high energy, composing crazy titles for imaginary films: 'Colt '45', 'March of the Grommets', 'They! are coming', 'High 'n Groovy', 'Kraken' and 'Kill or be Killed!'. 'Night Tapestry' was a Jacques Loussier/Bach-style piece for piano and jazz rhythm section. David Katz heard it and said:

'I've got to get you writing movies!'

A young director had just come down from Cambridge and was making his first feature film: 'I'll never forget what's his name' , an anti-establishment comedy with an all-star cast: Orson Welles, Oliver Reed, Harry Andrews, Carol White, Michael Hordern. The director was Michael Winner and I met him at his flat in Lennox Gardens with the French composer Francis Lai who'd composed 'Un homme et une femme'. They needed some contemporary London-style arrangements and I did them in best post-Sergeant Pepper. Francis was from Nice, a brilliant accordionist and musician as one could hear from 'A Man and a Woman', but quiet and rather nervous.

Amongst innumerable sessions I played piano one day on 'Half a Sixpence' shooting at Shepperton. The conductor was Irving Kostal who had been MD for the film of 'West Side Story' and he was immensely impressive. With him was a music editor called Carroll B. Knudson from Hollywood who had self-published a book which he showed me:

'You see this Howard. I rented computer-time from the main-frame computer at USC and printed 100 copies of all 271 pages. I had them lying in piles all over the house and my wife got so fed up that she finally decided to help me bind them - just to get rid of them!'

'What is it?'

'It's closely-printed number information. There's a rule in the cover and you put it under a line of numbers. At any given metronome tempo you can calculate with absolute accuracy on which beat or part of the beat any second or part of a second will fall, given that you are using 35mm film running at 24 frames per second.'

I let this sink in. It could be astonishingly valuable.

'David tells me you're a rising star. We'd be delighted to make up one of the limited edition for you and print your name on the cover - in gold. It'll be £50.'

That was a lot of money in 1967 but I decided to do it and I still have it with me today. Once I'd learnt how to use it, it put me way ahead in the field of synchronising music to film since everything I wrote fitted instantly and perfectly. In a world where time was expensive, it saved time.

I needed the information from Carroll B's timing -book rather sooner than imagined. John Fletcher, who'd so kindly mixed the sound on 'A Few Days', was now involved with a rather extraordinary 'pantechnicon' film; 'Red, White and Zero' - three films each by a different director: Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and Peter Brook, all with a left-inclined tendency. 'Zero' stood for Zero Mostel, later the brilliantly-funny star of 'The Producers', but on this occasion playing the part of a Wagnerian opera-singer late for 'The Ring' at Covent Garden. John thought that my knowledge of both Wagner and jazz might produce something interesting and when we met Peter it was decided that I'd do a jazz version of 'The Ride of the Valkyrie' as music track. I thought it was quite a funny idea and and liked what I'd come up with, but when we got to the music recording in Elstree I started to realise that a knowledge of both jazz and Wagner was needed to appreciate the in-jokes contained in it and that the scoring for brass and percussion satirising Wagner's heaviness in fact just sounded heavy. The film 'Zero' was never finished, nor 'Red' with Vanessa Redgrave. The third section was Lindsay's 'The White Bus' and that was released on its own, a splendidly surreal political satire with Arthur Lowe as a pompous provincial mayor, the making of which John captured in a wonderful award-winning documntary. Later Lindsay asked if I'd score 'If' but I somehow managed to turn up late for the viewing, missed the first scene and angered him beyond words. I'm not sure we'd have hit it off.

A week later I wrote a score for a documentary film about the Milk Board for solo guitar, asking 'Big' Jim Sullivan if he could record it on 12-string acoustic.FISHMARKETfollowed two weeks after that, a score for a documentary about Billingsgate using flute doubling bass clarinet and piccolo, trumpet doubling cornet, percussion playing xylophone, Vibraphone and side drum and myself playing piano. The third of this sudden trilogy of documentaries was a light-hearted look at English pastimes THE SPORTING BRITISHand I was more ambitious, using Piccolo trumpet in B flat doubling Flugel-horn, 2 woodwind, guitar, bass, drums and pecussion and myself on organ and piano. I was thrilled with this score which somehow combined elements of pop, jazz and classical whilst remaining expressive and able to support the dramatic content. I had found that above all things I loved writing music. Not only that but I had outlets to play and record it. It suddenly seemed so easy and the way I wrote was rapid and fluent.

These documentaries happened through my dear friends John and Marlene Fletcher whom I had met whilst a projectionist, when John had very kindly mixed the sound track of my 16mm film for me. They encouraged me enormously, but on one project I drew a blank. We were invited to dinner by Felix Greene, brother of both Hugh Carlton, head of the BBC and Graham, the novelist. Felix had spent two years with Fidel Castro and shot 'Cuba Va!' a wildly propagandist polemic about the Cuban Communist dictator. He and his American wife lived in a beautiful penthouse off Baker Street, but to get in we needed a codeword because the premises were purportedly watched by MI5 and his phone tapped. He spoke fondly and volubly on the subject:

'Converting the Cubans is a difficult task and will take a considerable time'

'Give them all a free fridge' I volunteered.

There was an icy silence in which I could hear a beautiful 18th-century carriage-clock ticking behind me.

'I'm not quite sure if Howard would be completely the right person for this John.'

We all got the message and I left before the pudding.

One of the musical directors at Abbey Road started an all-star session-musicians big band and asked me to play piano. He had somehow got hold of original scores and parts from the great bands: Count Basie, Stan Kenton, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Neil Hefti, Jack Teagarden and Jack Dorsey, after whom he named the band. We did a couple of BBC jazz club programmes, some concerts and gigs and I experienced at first hand the excitement and expertise of the genre. Perhaps because of this I was invited to play every Sunday on BBC's 'International Cabaret' 'live' from 'The Talk of the Town' with Alan Ainsworth's band. The same top men were in it, Kenny Baker, Don Lusher et al and we accompanied 'big names' like Billy Eckstine and Eartha Kitt. There were rehearsals in the morning and afternoon and at 6pm an invited audience would come in for the filming. The compere was the wildly funny Kenneth Williams who liked to make fun of me rather as Morecombe and Wise had done:

'Ooh, look at 'im on that big white piano there! Who does 'e think 'e is?'

One Sunday several of us went for a Greek lunch and I came back feeling slightly unwell. I started into the introduction of a number with American singer Vicky Carr but as the cameras started rolling realised I was about to be violently sick. I ran desperately towards the conveniences, placed with staggering inconvenience through the audience and down marble stairs in the basement, then lurched back to huge 'tutting', having turned an unpleasant shade of green.

'Are you alright to shoot?'

'Yes I'm fine.'

But I wasn't and it happened twice more until I simply had to leave. I wasn't asked again.

My drummer on 'Zero' had been Jack Peach who looked like a rugged fisherman, which in fact he was. He also played and fixed musicians for Dudley Moore who was to make two feature films in England before deserting to Los Angeles: 'Thirty is a Dangerous Age Cynthia' and 'Bedazzled' with Raquel Welch. He was a marvellous musician and had studied organ and composition at Brasenose Oxford gaining a full Doctorate. His delight was to score his own films and conduct them which he did at Olympic Studios in Barnes. I played keyboards for him and we went for coffee:

'I'd give anything to do what you do Howard.'

'Are you crazy? You're the most succesful comedian in the world, you've got an Aston Martin with a fridge in it, all the pretty girls in London doting on you, you play fantastically good jazz whenever you feel like it and make lots of money. What's the matter with you?'

'I wish I was just a musician Howard.'

I think he did. Almost 30 years later I met him again in Hollywood where I'd been to talk to Disney about a score for 'James and the Giant Peach'. I was waiting to meet the director for lunch when he walked into the restaurant and asked me what I was up to:

'Oh I'd give anything to do that Howard'

'But I haven't got the job!'

'No but they asked you. I would never be asked.'

'I'm sure if you wanted to you probably could.'

'No I'm finished, they don't want me anymore.'

'You're the top comedian in the world Dudley, and you've got a hugely succesful restaurant I've just been to up in Venice.'

His wife came in and sat way across the restaurant at the table he'd reserved.

'You'd better go Dudley.'

'I wish I was just a musician Howard.'

I suspect Dudley would have been happier as a composer than as a comedian. 'Little Miss Muffet' his devastatingly brilliant send-up of the Benjamin Britten folk -song genre shows just how good he would have been had he taken himself seriously.

I hadn't grieved too much about losing my job as pianist on 'International Cabaret' because as it turned out my career as a session pianist was already coming to a close. I was too busy writing and I loved it. Peter was still asking me to write TV commercials and other producers were wondering if they were missing out. An enterprising young producer, Graham Baker, rang from Benton and Bowles:

'We'd like to ask you to compose some experimental music tracks. We'll pay for them and we'll pay for you to record them. Let's say we have a client called 'Prompt' and a jingle that says: Spray dirt away with Prompt.' What could you do with it? Could you do it in different styles for instance? Could you surprise us?'

This was terrific fun! I was being asked to create loony spoof-commercials like I had for Peter and Liza's dinner party, but the difference was that I was getting paid for it. Would Mozart have done it? I'm quite sure he would!

I booked 3 singers and 5 players and wrote 3 different commercials: classical, rock and jazz, and word started to get around: Nick Galtress from Lonsdale Crowther commissioned a track for the launch of St. Moritz, Bob Mahoney from Wynne Films asked for a track for Ricol and Mike Fredman from Ogilvy and Mather a track for J and B whisky. They all seemed very pleased, especially Graham who had now been given the lucrative Courage Light Ale account:

'I'm shooting a film with mounted hussars in Hyde Park at dawn, directed by the great photographer Terry Donovan. We want something really striking.'

It was shot like a cavalry charge from a feature film and I thought should sound somehow historic but with a twist. I wrote in a Mozartian style but with a slight rock accent and scored it for two harpsichords (Carl Davis and Stanley Myers), piano (HB) and timpani playing glissandi (Terry Emery) - an unheard-of line-up for a TV ad. At first both agency and client didn't like it, but after talking it through asked if I could re-record the same music with a bigger line-up, more like a feature film, more heroic. I used a string orchestra with french horns adding the ingredient of an electric guitar and giving the timpani a rhythmic pattern.

They called it 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' and it worked, at the last moment being awarded the TV Mail Award for Best Sound-Track of the year. The awards dinner was to take place at the Park Lane Hilton and I invited a beautiful young actress called Mavis Taylor to accompany me. Everybody was congratulating us:

'You've made it!'

TV commercial music tracks up to this moment had been dominated by Johnny Johnson and Cliff Adams, the style being sub-Light Programme. The Courage music track was essentially classical in feel and this started a trend, producing a flood-tide of further offers, not least the corporate advertising for ICI 'Pathfinders' , which played on TV for years to come. Overnight I had become London's favourite advertising composer.

Laurie Johnson was working hard to complete a musical for Drury Lane called 'The Four Musketeers', a star-vehicle for Harry Secombe. He really did not have time to do this and write the scores for 'The Avengers' at the same time. David Katz said Laurie was thinking about taking on a composer to help him and suggested I show him some of my scores.

'He'll trust you because you've played on the show for over a year, you know his style and you've been part of the team.'

'I don't know if I could do it David'.

'Of course you could!'

I agreed to write an episode called 'My Wildest Dream' and went to view it.

'Since it's your first attempt we'll give you plenty of time. How would two weeks be?'

Two weeks? I'd have to compose incidental music for a one-hour film with no idea how much music that would entail. I would have to score it, check it, have the parts copied, then arrive and stand up to conduct the recording in front of critical players. I had been thrown in at the deep end of commercial scoring. How would I set about it? Laurie helped me:

'After the viewing just think up thematic material on the way home. I usually do that and sing into a tape recorder in the car, at the same time noting instrumentation ideas so that I can get started straight away.'

It sounded simple enough, but it wasn't. The next two weeks proved decidedly 'formative'. I had no ideas at all. I'd never dreamed of writing 'suspense' music. I tried a few chords, jotted down some themes, but it sounded derivative and inappropriate. I started to sweat, walk round the flat, sharpen pencils, make coffee - nothing helped. In school and college I had been told that one must 'be original'. This stricture applied to the instant production of music that needed to 'do a job' made it impossibly difficult. Yet I had to produce something. After several lost days fruitlessly pondering on this I made a decision:

'I must write the first thing that comes into my head. I don't have any time or any alternative. I have agreed to do it and I'm contracted to do it'

I laid out some score paper for the standard line-up - 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, woodwind, piano, percussion, guitar, bass. Karen Heward, the music editor, had already measured all the film sections and I had cue sheets at the ready. I had a top-quality stop-watch with a stop/start facility which I'd bought from a little jewellers near me in Olympia. I had the whole writing-kit.

It was a horrible experience. I forced myself hour-after-hour, day-after-day to get notes onto paper. If it was rubbish and was laughed off the studio floor, well at least I'd completed it and done what I had promised.

But an odd thing happened. At some point during the second week an idea on paper started to 'walk away' on its own. It said to me:

'This all right. I know where I'm going. Just write me down and get a move on!'

I did so, and I kept going, keeping all critical analysis in suspension.

'Look at a tightrope walker. He is evidently completely concentrated, because if he were not he would fall to the ground. His life is at stake, and it is only perfect concentration which can save him. Yet do you believe his thought and his imagination are occupied with what he is doing? Do you think that he reflects and that he imagines, that he calculates and that he makes plans with regard to each step that he makes on the rope? If he were to do that he would fall immediately. He has to eliminate all activity of the intellect and of the imagination in order to avoid a fall.' (Martin Kriele)

I had achieved this state by a combination of force - huge pressure being put on me - and accident- the right-hand side of the brain had somehow come into play and told the left-hand side to shut up. Suddenly the 'flow' which had effortlessly animated my earliest pieces had returned. I had suspended the 'oscillations of the mental substance' and learnt 'concentration without effort'.

Laurie's copyist Eddie Grey started collecting the scores from me and I asked nervously if they looked all right.

'They look fine to me.'

I got to Elstree and smiled at the gate-man - no longer just a keyboard player but composer, conductor, musical director.

'All right mate? How's the teeth?'

At the end of the first recording session the session players applauded- something that I can only remember happening on one other occasion in my whole studio career. I went up for lunch in the canteen. All the players stayed at one end, all the production-team stayed at the other end. I had become 'management' and my stomach sank - there was a price to pay for such a sudden leap. I went on to do further episodes in the third series: 'All done with mirrors' , Whatever happened to yesterday, Game , and then on to some in the fourth series: Noon-Doomsday , Prisoner , The Interrogators , Take me to your leader , and Who was that man I saw you with' - but the extraordinary elation of that first session never quite happened again.

Laurie Johnson was a great friend of the legendary composer Bernard Herrmann who was writing a film for the Boulting Brothers. He'd asked Laurie if he would record some orchestral arrangements in a basement studio in Kingsway, but Laurie was busy and hated working 'underground'. I went along and conducted some straightforward-enough numbers but everybody seemed thrilled to bits. Roy Boulting and his wife Hayley Mills were there and we all went for a drink. Roy seemed so impressed that off the top of his head he offered to sponsor my further coaching as a composer `anywhere in the world'. However at this moment I was so phenomenally busy on all fronts that I couldn't imagine a way to extricate myself from all the commitments even if I had wanted to. I'd become very happy doing what I was doing and the thought of 'going back to school' horrified me.

Bernard and I started to talk about music and the problems that surround composition. He was furious about almost everything and felt that his career had been unjustly destroyed. He thought films had been taken over by the pop world and nobody wanted 'proper' orchestral scores since 'The Graduate' and The Beatles. He felt neglected, unappreciated and unwanted, but when he spoke of great music he would come to life and be warm-hearted and kind and generous. He had a really lovely young wife, Norma, who was the soul of patience and understanding and we all used to meet up. I showed him 'Movement for Orchestra' and he was delighted with it. But of course it was tonal and melodic and contrapuntal and we 'spoke the same language' - the language of Debussy and Ravel and Copland and Sibelius and Bartok -music music.

'Has it been played by the BBC?'

'No.'

'Outrageous, what's the matter with them?!'

He had a theme in the film which he felt might be given some sort of jazz treatment and I suggested it could be done with 3 flutes, jazz harp, bass and drums as there was a fabulous jazz harpist in London called David Snell.

'OK, you organise it and arrange it and we'll do it as part of the sessions. Why don't you play celeste as well? Where can I get a theramin?'

'Difficult to find, but I've got a Moog synthesizer that has a ribbon controller and achieves a virtually identical result.'

'Let me hear it.'

So I got to work with Bernard on a number of recordings. He was notoriously difficult, but he didn't mean to be. Mostly he felt that his music was being threatened and when he did he would explode in fury. First thing in the morning on 'Twisted Nerve' he asked for 4 bass flutes to play a sustained low bass line, not easy at the best of times. It needs a lot of puff and the instruments need to warm up.

'I could make a better sound farting!'

'You can't talk like that to musicians Benny. That's terrible.'

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry everybody.'

And he was.

I visited Benny for tea in his house in Regent's Park. His study was packed with thousands of 78 rpm records: his recordings as conductor of the CBS Symphony Orchestra, his scores for Welles and Hitchcock, and his own 'serious' music of which he had sponsored recordings himself (sadly to say): the opera 'Wuthering Heights', the cantata 'Moby Dick'.

'How do you write Benny?'

He pulled out some specially-printed yellow manuscript paper of 9 lines.

'I write on this with a fountain-pen and I never cross anything out.'

'Surely you can't score for orchestra on this?'

'Sure I can. Here's a line-up: 4 bass flutes, 4 cor anglais, 4 bass clarinets, 4 contra bassoons, 4 horns, 4 harps, 4 vibraphones, strings.'

'That would sound terribly dark.'

'I wannit to sound dark!'

'How many violins did you use on the shower scene in Psycho?'

'Ninety!'

'It couldn't have been?'

'Ninety!'

'How many radio shows did you do with Orson Welles?'

'500.'

'What was your favourite line-up?'

'Vibraphone and strings.'

The LSO were looking for a new conductor and Benny would have loved to do that more than anything in the world.

'What do you think of Andre Previn? I think he's pretty good isn't he?'

'There's only one trick about conducting and that is getting the job!'

Oh Benny you don't mean that.'

If he'd met up with Andre Previn of course he would have got on like a house on fire, but saying things like this upset people and they began to upset me.

Quincy Jones was recording an album for a huge 70mm epic called 'McKenna's Gold'. He needed a conductor and David recommended me:

'I've told him you're the whiz-kid.'

'Can I see the score?'

'No, don't worry darling, just turn up.'

Wessex Studio was in Islington and enormous. I got there early and counted stands for well over 100 players, maybe 120: 12 percussion, 12 guitars, 16 horns, 12 brass, 90 strings. I tried to imagine what it would sound like. The score was lying on the conductor's desk and I got up there and opened it. The only things I had ever conducted up to now were my own scores, which I conducted with a pencil. Should I have a proper stick? It had never occurred to me until this moment. There must be a reason for having one.

'Of course, a white stick shows up brilliantly against a black suit and you can see the down-beat even from the back desk of a 120-piece orchestra.'

It was too late to acquire one and I stuck to the pencil. The first bar was tutti and marked fff. The style was flamboyant Mid-West epic. I read the score through as the players gradually drifted in, worked out tempi and marked in cut-offs and fermatas.

I lifted the pencil in an up-beat in the tempo and the sound hit me like a force-10 gale. I went into the box to meet Quincy.

'All your instincts are right, man.'

'I'm not sure the 12 guitars are clear about what they're doing.'

'You sort them out, man.'

'OK.'

He was pleased. We got on brilliantly.

Next day I met Benny and Norma at Khan's in Westbourne Grove and waxed lyrical about Quincy.

'Huh, Quincy Jones, what does he know about anything?'

'Well I think he's about the best jazz arranger in the world.'

'Huh, jazz-arranging! Anyone can do that!'

Very unwisely I made a come-back:

'Well you can't.'

This sort of Scorpionic sting-in-the-tail very often got me into trouble. It was a joke, but it upset Benny terribly and he looked to be on the verge of tears. I had to be much more careful.

I had lunch one day with him and Miklos Rozsa at 'The Gay Hussar', two of the mightiest composers of the Hollywood era. Neither of them were doing very much and they were puzzled. The studio system had changed. When there were vast empires making dozens of films there was room for opulence, extravagance, experiment and eccentricity. If 100 films for Fox made no profit, one might suddenly make such an enormous profit that nothing else mattered. But when each film was a money-making project backed by investors, music is one of the elements that can be scrutinised. The loan from the bank is on the point of exhaustion and it's the last element to be added. Benny loved to say:

'Film is a mosaic art'

which has advantages and disadvantages. The most hurtful thing that happened in Benny's professional life was one of the disadvantages. Alfred Hitchcock was as much affected by the changes of the cultural climate as anyone else and music was a major ingredient of his work over which he had total control. Benny had not worked for him since 'Marnie'. 'Torn Curtain' had been scored by John Addison and Topaz by Maurice Jarre. Benny's star started to rise again with Truffaut's eulogy of him in Cahiers du Cinema and 'Fahrenheit 451' and I believe he hoped to make it up with Hitchcock and do 'Frenzy', but somehow Hitchcock got persuaded that Benny was still 'old hat' and the score went to Ron Goodwin which I know upset him a lot.

He took on Brian de Palma's 'Sisters' which I played on. It looked pretty nasty and in the first coffee-break he didn't look too cheerful:

'Are you OK Benny?'

He looked at me in misery and this time did actually burst into floods of tears.

'I just need to work Howard. I just need to work.'

The film-world is no respecter of persons and poor Bernard wasted nearly ten years 'out in the cold.' What a waste. I was wrong about his contact with Brian de Palma because in 1976 he created a superb score for 'Obsession' following the equally brilliant 'Taxi Driver' for Martin Scorsese. His career looked set to take off up to the stars again - but it was too late.

Wealth meant very little to him and he always took buses rather than taxis. Just before he died I glimpsed him outside Liz's office waiting for a bus in the rain. In a website interview in 2010 called 'Running with the Kids' Norma Herrmann was asked Bernard's opinion of Howard to which she replied, "Oh yes he loved Howard Blake before everybody loved Howard Blake."

Stephie Lengauer was approached by a young architect, Tom Law, who needed music for a rather unusual project: the total reconstruction of Piccadilly Circus! Tom had won the award for the best design and it was proposed to create a permanently-open exhibition in a space within the Criterion Theatre, situated on the circus's south side.

'We have model displays and photographs and a film that will run on a permanent loop all day, every day.'

'The music will have to be extraordinarily 'neutral' to bear such repetition. Anything melodic or expressive would eventually drive you crazy. On the other hand it should be dramatic, it should support the images and draw the public's attention to the film.'

'What will you do?'

'Percussion only, maybe 4 players using all sorts of different percussion instruments, some of them with their natural sound, some 'treated'. Taking for instance the sound of a tam-tam roll and varying the pitch on it, or taking a glockenspiel sound and turning it into a bass sound.'

I created Exhibition in Piccadilly and Tom was pleased. Involved with the project was David Kingsley, head of the advertising agency, of Kingsley, Manton, Palmer, who was to become a great friend.

At the same time as Bernard and Miklos were not receiving offers for film scores I was. I looked young and trendy, with long hair, flared trousers and a leather jacket. I drove a sports car, an extraordinary prototype made specially for the 1968 motor show by the Honda brothers, half the size of an E-type but similar in design, eight carburettors and an acceleration that could beat everything else on the road. Laurie Johnson and 'The Avengers' had given me the plummiest of all plum series to write and conduct, therefore I was directors' number one choice. Jimmy Hill had directed some of the best-ever episodes and he invited Mavis and I to dinner at his 'farmhouse' in Shepherd's Bush. Could there possibly be such a thing? We followed instructions and arrived at a high brick wall amidst low-priced terraced houses, but there was a tiny door and when we pressed the bell we were let into an area where time had stood still- a beautiful Tudor farmhouse in exquisite condition and Jimmy's vintage Rolls-Royce tucked away in a stable. Over quantities of champagne Jimmy described his new film. He had had a big success with 'Born Free' and the cuddliness of lions and now he had made one about an elephant called 'Poli-poli'. He had decided to use tracks from a popular album called 'African Safari' by Bert Kampfaert and wanted a score to fit around it, extend it and complement it. This had probably put other composers off- they would say:

'It must have my own theme-tune,'

but this didn't put me off. I just thought:

'I am being offerred a full-length feature film for the cinema. How marvellous!'

It was titled 'An Elephant called Slowly'and starred Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers. We were invited down to their 'game-keepers cottage' in Surrey and as I got out of the car a lioness gambolled playfully towards me.

'She's very, very young and completely harmless' cooed Virginia, but we went into lunch with stomachs fluttering and hearts beating overtime.

I had been writing for 'The Avengers' with more-or-less a 'big band', no strings, brass and saxophones and rhythm. So why not a big-band for elephants? They're pretty big. I set out boldly on the scoring, with Mavis looking after me, cooking meals in the Hammersmith flat and going out on the town and buying me shirts and ties by the dozen.

'What does Mavis mean?'

'It means a thrush.'

Mavis is a word Which means a thrush, a sort of bird. So innocent and gay She looks around As if to say 'No problems have occurred.'

It didn't occur to me to listen to John Barry's score for 'Born Free', because I presumed Jimmy would want something 'original'. Without too much conscious thought on the matter I took rather a 'funky' line with the project. When the elephants all marched together I had them do it to a really heavy rock beat, with big band trumpets blasting over it, and Ronnie Verrall playing rock-drum fills as if he was going to bust. When the action lightened and the elephants played together I had funky saxophones against a heavy back-beat. Other scenes were more 'classical'. When hippos wallowed in the river a soprano saxophone led a sort of Milhaud-type waltz with two further saxes in trio, and when ostriches appeared to compete in a race, the scoring was brittle in simultaneous 3 and 2 time like Stravinsky or Satie.

When the film came out everybody seemed pleased.

I was approached by Bell Records in New York who made a very nice album from my music and released it in New York. Gradually it dawned on people that I had not written a 'conventional' film score until one day in the nineties the score made a mark in 'Blaxploitation' on the web.

Guitarist (sic!) Howard Blake scored the follow-up movie to "Born Free" in a completely oddball funk fashion. A great, almost tongue-in-cheek album with a big band Disney-style sound in places, don't miss the excellent slowburn breakbeat instrumental "Elephant Rides Again".

Its latest surprise incarnation was in 2003 when a song based on 'Elephant rides again' was featured in the Hollywood blockbuster movie 'The Prince and Me' in a single by Jem Griffith called 'Just a Ride'.

No sooner had I completed this than Mario Zampi asked if I would score an all-star British comedy film, 'Some Will , Some Won't' - a remake of 'Laughter in Paradise', starring Leslie Phillips, Ronnie Corbett, Thora Hird, Wilfred Brambell, Dennis Price, Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, Barbara Murray and Eleanor Summerfield. What a cast!

And yet...remakes never work. Because all ideas are 'of their time', and the humour of this film relied on class-consciousness and the underling's terror of upsetting his superior. By 1969 these social attitudes had been well and truly challenged, if not removed, and whatever a score can do, it cannot make an unfunny film funny. I did my best. I created a little celesta theme for Wilfred Brambell's crazy old man's joke (ha, ha you think you're going to inherit all the money, but you're not), a big jazz-waltz theme to spell out the words 'some will, some won't', a bass guitar riff to accompany the fake-gangster, fake-suspense-running-gag and so on..every body and every idea having its own signature, all of the themes counterpointing each other. Once again I didn't score for a big string-lined orchestra, but used rhythm instruments, organ and guitars, which perhaps had never happened before in this genre. We recorded it in the venerable old Elstree sound-stage and this didn't work either. The studios in town had moved on to multi-track and sophisticated echoes and direct injection, new techniques that acted together to make new sound concepts.

The work I did in commercials was at the forefront of this. Commercials for Bounty,'the Taste of Paradise', which played on TV for the next 15 years, for Deep Heat, Delight, Jaffa, Kleenex, Gipsy Cream, Hearty Joe, Kleenex, Mon Cheri, Energen, Lifeboy, Babycham, Nescafe, Golden Glen, Singer, Patacake, Becel, Hunter, Ribena, Dunlop with a scat big-band track from Jon Hendrix, Maxim for Ridley Scott, Carrol's, Berec, Kleenex, Jaffa, Broadleaf, Mothercare, Berec.)

Mavis and I had got married and she thought we ought to live somewhere more up-market than Llewellyn Mansions in the Hammersmith Road. She was perfectly content to house-hunt without me and I hadn't a second's worth of spare time to look. She found 40 Hans Place round the corner from Harrods in Knightsbridge,a 6-storey mansion on a 10-year lease in some need of decoration:

'My family will come down from Hartlepool and decorate it.'

Frank seemed to think it was a good deal. I returned to the flat after a recording session and the key didn't fit. Only then did I remember that we had moved. The hallway was enormous, the kitchen was 25' square and there was a dining-room with hidden ceiling lights. On the first floor was a huge lounge with faded white-and-gold pseudo-rococo cupboarding and a large square room at the back looking onto nothing very much which was to be my work room. Then a master bedroom and bathroom the size of Victoria Station on floor three, two more bedrooms and another bath on floor 4 and a 3-room attic on top. I disliked it immediately but didn't say so.

Mavis was thrilled to bits.

Granada TV had decided to move into feature film production and in November the producer and director visited us. I was asked if I would compose the score for their first film, a satirical comedy called 'All the Way Up' starring Warren Mitchell as a vulgar go-getter in a northern town aiming for the high life. It had started life as a stage play with Laurence Olivier and relied very much on the dialogue and acting. The producer was Philip Mackie and he wanted a song written for the film that would express the cynicism of the subject, but with a bit of contemporary bounce and humour. I suggested 'The Scaffold' with whom I'd worked and whose style I thought would fit the bill. I explained that I didn't write lyrics and asked if the film company could provide a good lyricist for me to work with. Norman Newell came to see me and I explained the idea, but when he presented a lyric I was not too keen on it. I tried to sketch out what I had in mind, but once started on it I got hooked and leaving the score to one side spent several days working on the lyric. Norman had written a couple more by this time but I still wasn't very convinced and submitted all our various efforts to the producers to get a reaction. To my surprise they chose mine and all of a sudden I was lyric-writer as well as composer:

'All the way up, get a little bit higher All the way up, take it up to the top All the way up, push a little bit harder but don't ever stop; Finding a road that leads me up the easy way, Taking a ride that satisfies me more and more each day,

All the way up, get a little bit faster, All the way up, I'm ahead of the crowd, All the way up, not a thought of disaster till I'm sitting on a cloud, The world's wide open and waiting for a man Who has found how to make a connection, Who has practised the art of deception, Who is set now to take one direction, All the way up!'

I missed my old flat, I didn't like the house, I didn't like my new lifestyle there and Mavis and I were starting to quarrel. I'd just written a film about an arriviste, a go-getter, an upstart, and I felt like one myself. Was this really what I had set out to do? Was this what my talent was for? After several years of joyous, chaotic upward mobility I was suddenly questioning everything and this was brought to the boil, suddenly, in no uncertain measure, in public. David Buckton, a producer from Islington, rang me and asked if I would appear on a live BBC2 TV talk programme, 'Music Now'. He had chosen me as an example of a 'succesful media composer' of the day. The ferocious Hans Keller, head of Radio 3 wished to expound the theory that only PURE music has any validity. He might attack me. Could I defend myself?

'By all means I said. Love to.'

I arrived at White City TV studios and was warmly welcomed by the presenter who explained the programme and invited us all to come up to the control box for champagne afterwards. Hans Keller was asked to kick the thing off:

'Real proper true meaningful muzic does not rely on any azzistance from any uzzer art-form. It is pure abztraction at ze highest possible level of culture. I give az an example ze last sree ztring quartets of Beethoven. Ven you are reading my book on funczional analyziz you vill underztand zat ze zimple phrase, ze unit is perfectly formed and then developed by way of ONLY and I stress ONLY using zose elements, zese particular note formasions being tranzformed by way of metamorphosis into other more elongated, truncated, extended or abridged formulae that ORGANICALLY display cohesion, solidity and forward movements towards an ultimately ineffable structural consummating zynthesisis.'

'Howard Blake, what do you have to say about that?

'Well poor old Beethoven's last 3 string quartets always seem to come up in this sort of context. I think he would have been pretty annoyed. He'd have said that they had something to do with God and Inspiration and the fact that he was getting old, losing it a bit and nobody wanted to play his large-scale works works any more. If Mr. Keller is saying that music should not rely on any other art-form Beethoven's 9th Symphony goes right out the window because he used lyrics by Schiller. The same goes for his opera 'Fidelio', totally reliant on the libretto and all his and everybody-else's art-songs by great poets. Forget Schubert and Brahms and Mahler and Mozart and Bach. They're heavily reliant on 'other art-forms.' And what about ballet? It's totally reliant on dance. So are you going to chuck out all the best music of Stravinsky: The Firebird, Petrouchka and The Rite of Spring? All of Tchaikovsky? All the operas of Verdi and Puccini and Moussorgsky? Perhaps you're just getting at film music? I agree that most of it seems poor, because it's written at very high speed and it does a subservient job most of the time- under traffic, under dialogue, under sound effects. That's what it is there to do. But then have you ever considered the incalulable amount of dross produced in the pantheon of great opera, ballet and serious music. It's very easy to see only masterpieces when one looks backwards, because one discards all the dross and retains the gold. Music is part of humanity, like breathing and making love and living. A human being isn't an abstract concept Mr.Keller. It's alive.'

Hans Keller appeared to be struck dumb and found it hard to make a come-back. I had transgressed the rules of polite discussion and won the argument I had been expressly chosen to lose. Like the boxer in the fixed fight who knocks out the champion and causes all the gamblers in the know to lose their money. Dangerous. I was not invited up to the control box but I met David the director some days later. I asked him:

'What do you believe in? What do you believe life is about?'

'I don't believe in anything at all.'

'You can't possibly mean that? You're a BBC director, a university graduate, a privileged person in our society. Why do you direct programmes for instance?

'To make a living.'

'Is that all?'

'Yes.'

'Well I can't live like that. I believe in art, I believe in humanity, I believe in living. Being on your programme has shaken some of that belief. I need to think all these matters through in depth in order to continue with my life. Perhaps you and Keller are right. Perhaps we might as well all blow our brains out?'

'You're taking things far too seriously old boy.'

'Don't give me that 'old boy' rubbish. I find your attitude deeply shocking'

'What are you going to do about it?'

'Well you may not know what you think or believe but I'm going to find out what I do think, and I won't go on with my life in the way it is until I do.'

'Good luck.'

I rang Stanley who came over to see me.

'I'm in a terrible state Stanley.'

'Why?'

'I don't know why. I can't bear being in this house, I don't want to write any more music, or play or do anything. I don't feel well.'

'You look all right.'

'I don't believe what I'm doing.'

'Go and see Chandra Sharma, he'll sort you out.'

'Who is he?'

'Just the most brilliant doctor in the world, and guru and magician and mystic...patients like Yehudi Menuhin and Tina Turner. I'll tell him you'd like to come over.'

Dr.Sharma was sitting cross-legged on a wide, low, carved Indian chair with his back to the window.

'Good morning.'

He smiled.

'There's nothing really wrong with me, I would like a bit of a check-up.'

He smiled.

'I've been working very, very hard, and we moved house and I'm being offerred lots of things, and I'm not sure I have time to do any of it.'

He smiled...and suddenly for no apparent reason I burst into tears.

'That's better Blake. Stretch out your right hand.'

'What?'

'Your right hand. Hold it out straight.'

I did so and it shook uncontrollably.

'Now the left hand'

Same result.

'Oh yes Blake you are going to be dead in five years!'

He looked straight at me and rocked with silent laughter, as if this was the most tremendous joke.

'Yes, Blake, you are speeding. You need to calm down, take up some system of meditation, do some exercise, a bit of Yoga perhaps.'

'I don't know what I think any more. I really want to find out the meaning of everything.'

'Try Watkins bookshop, Cecil Court. They have books on every belief system.'

'I just want to get out of what I'm doing altogether.'

'Well we can't do that Blake. We all have to swim in the river, not stand on the bank. But you should take some time off to refresh yourself. I'll give you a check-up anyway.'

He did so.

'There is nothing the matter with you.'

'There must be something? Isn't there some operation I ought to have at some time, maybe not pressing, but eventually necessary.'

He looked at me steadily for a long time.

'I see what you are after Blake. Well, in fact you do have a grumbling appendix, not at all serious, due to eating and drinking the wrong things. Eventually you will no doubt get appendicitis and have to have it removed.'

'I'd like that.'

'Yes I can see that you would like that. It would give you a reason to disappear.'

'Yes.'

'It is possible to have such an operation, but if you want it right away it will have to be done privately. I can arrange for the best surgeon in Harley Street and you can stay at a private clinic in St John's Wood.'

'How about Monday?'

I woke amidst a great mass of expensive flowers:

'Get well soon Howard!'

'Every good wish for your recovery!'

Half of London seemed to care about me, or did they just want me to get back to work? The conservatory next my room was full of beautiful foreign girls recovering from abortions, princesses draped in superb silk or chiffon dressing gowns.

'Are you in pain darling?'

'Can you move?'

I wasn't really in pain, just a bit sore and the point was I'd stopped working. It felt wonderful!

A few days later I was back in the castle and talking to Mavis:

'I want to drive as far as possible from London and find somewhere in the country or by the sea where it's totally silent and calm and I can think about things.'

'What things?'

'Well I want to breathe some fresh air, and do some Yoga, and read a bit of Jung and think about music and art and my place in society and that sort of stuff.'

'Well your place in society is here. We're living in this magnificent house in London and you've got the whole world at your feet. Why on earth do you want to leave it all? What's the matter with you?'

'I can't do it any more. Come with me, it'll be great.'

'I want to stay here.'

Perhaps by some sort of sympathetic magic my little grey Honda sports car had coked up its 8 cylinders and died. I traded it in for a silver-sand sit-up-and-beg Saab 96 with free-wheel clutch facility for accelerating round corners, packed an overnight bag and drove west. I had no idea where I was going but an 'alternative' couple who were occupying our basement flat had talked up a 'meditation commune' hidden away across a rocky beach somewhere near St.Ives. I thought I might give it a try. After a several-day circuitous trajectory through Surrey, Hampshire, Dorset and Devon I arrived there, but scrambling over rocks after an appendectomy is not to be recommended and I retired hurt.

I drove North next day past a sign saying 'holiday chalets' and turned in to a large holiday camp, not yet open for the season. Right on the edge of a monster sand-dune above the sea perched a lone cabin under a telephone pole. Six fat cuckoos were singing major thirds tuned at random. The perfect place. I would be the seventh.

'For all enquiries contact Messrs. Grabbit & Runne, Perranporth.'

'I'd like to rent cabin number 34.'

'We're not open for the season yet.'

'It doesn't matter. How much would it be?'

'£2.50 a week.'

'I'll take it.'

I woke to the sound of Atlantic rollers and wind whistling through grasses and did my first painful hour of yoga with the instruction book from Watkins perched in front of a small electric fire. I was glad no-one was watching. It was much too cold to swim, but each day I walked for miles along the wide white beach. I bought health foods as recommended by Sharma's clinic: half-fat cheese, fruit, beansprouts, nuts, pumpernickel, salad, yoghourt, china tea and lemon. An excellent bookshop in Truro provided me with a Shorter Oxford Dictionary for £5.00, Jung's 'Man and his Symbols', Fromm's 'The Art of Loving', Colin Wilson's 'The Outsider' and books on birds, plants, thought and ecology.

One cold,stormy morning I stood at the top of my gigantic sand-dune and reasoned with myself:

'Why have you left London?'

'I didn't feel free.'

'Why didn't you feel free?'

'Because of fear.'

'Fear of what?'

'I don't know.'

'Do you think if you had no fear you would feel free?'

'Yes.'

'Well, let's start somewhere. For example, what do you fear right now?'

'I fear the cold. I fear the sea which is extremely rough. I fear being laughed at. I fear scandal and rumour. I fear being without money. I fear being an outsider. I fear being alone. I fear having no one to care for me. I fear being unsuccesful. I fear the wrath of the establishment if I don't think as it wishes me to think. I fear...'

'It is fear which is preventing you from being your true self and for that reason you feel unfulfilled, frustrated and despairing despite whatever outer comforts you may have gained. If you can overcome fear you will be able to fulfil yourself as God (or the universe or nature or whatever you want to call it) intends and this will give you true happiness regardless of torments that may be imposed by detractors. It will give you the strength to overcome all obstacles, to rise above them, ignore and transcend them.'

I stripped off my clothes and tore headlong down the sand-cliff down into the sea. It was as cold as ice and I was hurled about in gigantic waves. I felt ecstatically happy. Colin Wilson talks incessantly in his books of Factor X, the experience of transcendence that we all desire within us. Jung describes it as the moment of initiation, individuation, self-realisation.

I had found it.

Primitive societies regard the experience of initiation as essential. At a certain age men must go through ordeals to prove themselves, to prove that they are brave and can stand up for the tribe and their wives and families against all odds, if necessary die in the attempt rather than ever give in. Women don't need such experience since initiation arises through the painful experience of childbirth. Today's society buries this instinct in dangerous-sport clubs, parachuting, deep-sea diving or just funfare helter-skelters, recognising the thrill-factor only as a form of fun rather than as an experience of fear in the pursuit of inner truth. The danger of this 'fear-as- fun' view is revealed in the enormously-increasing number of brutal crimes carried out for no other reason than to experience a thrill, and it is no accident that Colin's researches with Factor-X led him gradually to become the most prolific writer on the psychology of crime.

I had inadvertently discovered a means of self-initiation by jumping of a sand-dune, which surely couldn't have hurt anybody. The astrologer Samuel Weir, whom I never met, studied my astral chart and wrote to me with advice concerning 'jumping off cliffs':

'The fact that you have proved your ability to both write and interpret music can easily obscure the truth that had the same amount of stubborness, fixity of purpose, self-reliance and will-power been used in almost any other field of effort, your great determination to overcome obstacles would have given you equal success there also. So,you are much more than a composer. The stresses within your nature have been used by you as a coiled spring driving you to achievement. Starting with what was virtually 'detective work', investigating Composition, you then divided and mixed tone values until your critical ear was satisfied. The criterion seems to be throughout that the end product should be both totally unexpected- by ordinary classical standards- yet truly harmonious in the tradition of 'Uranus' in The Planets. Yet not so much The Clown as The Fool in the Tarot - and no praise could be higher. It is the letter Shin, the 21st letter of the Hebrew alphabet which is attributed to the Arcanum, 'The Fool':

'With light step,as if earth and its trammels had little power to restrain him, a young man in gorgeous vestments pauses at the brink of a precipice among the great heights of the world; he surveys the blue distance before him-its expanse of sky rather than the prospect below. His act of eager walking is still indicated. The edge which opens on the depth has no terror; it is as if angels are waiting to uphold him, if it came about that he leaped from the height. He is the spirit in search of experience. He is not afraid to jump off the cliff.'

I jumped off the cliff!

Having realised I was held back by all these absurd fears I started to think that I did not want to go on just making money from cmmercial music, however lucrative. I remembered my dreams of combining film with music on a 'serious' level and felt that I should try and go further 'as an artist.' I realised that although I had been advised that I would never be good enough or fast enough to compose professionally ,this had proved to be totally untrue. (In fact several times recently I'd been described as 'the fastest writer in the business'). Writing commercially under extreme pressure had forced open a stream of creativity beyond anything I could have imagined, even though the actual product had not been my own,and I had frequently not been in sympathy with it. I felt that if I could now develop my own musical voice far further, keep this ability to create fluently and use all the other expertise I had in film and media and lyrics and production intact, I might be able to create a genuine new music with some gravitas to it, which might speak to the hearts of everybody in a comprehensible language. I was not sure how the visual element would fit in, but believed I must start all over again in order to develop my composition skills further than I had so far. I had come back to my 18-year old fantasy of a 'film symphony', progressing beyond Beethoven in music, beyond Wagner in opera, beyond Tchaikovsky in ballet, beyond Eisenstein in film - New Art, the Gesamtkunstwerk of the twentieth century.

But how one earth would I set about this great 'film symphony?' I began to sketch out a scenario. It should begin with the unconscious, the perfect innocence of the child, the eternal nature of the sea, the beauty of total purity. I walked along the beaches day by day and fragments of melodies came floating into my head. One fragment was to become the theme of Festival Mass, another the theme of 'The Passion of Mary' and one was to become 'Walking in the air'.

Liz eventually tracked me down. A young chap from the Sandy Beach Hotel had somehow heard about me and ran across the dunes to my hut:

'Your agent wants to speak to you. Liz.'

I followed the telephone line to a wind-swept phone box and rang her.

'You've been offerred a feature film by Betty Box.'

'What's it about?'

'It's called 'Percy' and stars Hywel Bennett. It's about a man who has a penis transplant.'

'I won't do it.'

'Why not?'

'I've got enough problems of my own.'

A few days later the young chap knocked on my door again:

'My mother says would you like to have dinner at the hotel?'

'Oh that's very nice of her.'

I went down there and was warmly welcomed.

'Would you play a bit of piano for us?'

Ah, that was it.

At the weekend I was invited again and offerred the use of an attractive bungalow next to the hotel. In the early evening Mavis arrived down from London 'to discuss my problem'.

'I don't have a problem. I haven't been so happy for years.'

'Well thanks a lot!'

From next door we could hear an ever-mounting roar. Lots of people were arriving, laughing and chatting and drinking.

The young chap knocked on our door:

'Mum says you promised to play tonight and we've got half of Cornwall here. Can you come over?'

'Oh, so you're playing in bars again!'

Mavis was not at all pleased and the discussion started to broaden out and take root. It would be a long one.

'The customers are getting annoyed waiting for you. They might turn nasty. Please come over Mister Blake!'

'I absolutely forbid you to go and play piano in a bar until we've sorted out our relationship!'

I never got there and late in the night we drove back to Knightsbridge.

The idyll had ended.

I went to see Liz in her office at 295 Regent Street:

'I took you on as a young unknown and built you up so that you're offerred top-quality feature films. Now you're turning them down. Word will go round the business.'

'I've brought you a present.'

I had bought a sort of desk-top box made of onyx and I placed it in front of her. It was really rather ghastly and she regarded it in silence.

'I can't thank you enough for all the help you've given me. I realise that I've let you down and that we'll have to part company.'

She continued to contemplate the box in silence and I slunk away.

Film offers had stopped coming in as I started to consider my next disastrous career-move. Mavis was by no means pleased either.

'What are you going to do?'

'I want to start all over again. I'm not good enough and I don't know enough. Maybe I'll go to Los Angeles and enrol in the USC composing course. I want to listen to more experimental music, maybe study electronic music, find out what's going on. It'll be in preparation for the 'film symphony' which I'm going to start sketching.'

'But what about working and making a living, and what about this house and us?'

'I can't work in this house. It's ghastly, it's so big that we invite guests, it needs so much decorating it's full of decorators, and it needs such a lot of cleaning that we have to have cleaners. I can't concentrate. Worst of all I can't play the piano because of the neighbours. I want to move out to the country.'

'Well I want to stay here.'

'All right, well suppose you stay here and I find a room somewhere to work in. Let's try that.'

I rented a small studio off the Fulham Road and started painting it, which I found therapeutic. I thought:

'Mavis wants to go on living in the castle and I want to work here. I need to go on making a living and maybe I've caused a bit of a blip in my film work, but I'm still being offerred things. I should use them as an opportunity for musical experimentation. I can book whatever instruments I want, try out any techniques that I like and create brilliant screen tracks. In my spare time I can still study and continue with the project.'

I'd got a new slant. Commercials were fun things. I evolved the theory:

'All reward for artistic work varies in inverse proportion to its quality. (But perhaps one can improve the quality)'

A delightful chap called Bobby Silas invited me to a top-secret advertising discussion:

'What is muesli?'

'A sort of breakfast cereal eaten in Switzerland.'

'Excellent. Go on.'

'It's made of fruit and nuts - very healthy.'

'How do you know all this?'

'Well I actually eat it because I've been brain-washed into health food by my Indian doctor.'

'Brilliant. You've got the job!'

With tender loving care I wrote a lyrical, slightly rock-inflected theme-tune for the launch of Alpen scoring it for alto flute and oboe in unison, with Fender-Rhodes piano, bass guitar, drums and strings, recording it at CTS Bayswater. Not only was I writing commercially but I was simultaneously promoting my own new-found life-style! It was a new departure for Weetabix who manufactured it, but their sales went up by 500% in the first week, the TV Mail printed an article called 'One that worked', and everyone was very pleased.

Three days later I was approached by Masius to write a track for W H Smith- something new and startling perhaps?. As part of my own re-education programme I had signed up for an electronic music course given by Ernest Buerk in a basement off Baker Street and once a week we played with overdubs and multi-tracking, ring modulators and musique concrete. We would need to present an electronic track of our own making for the end-of-course concert. Robert Moog had just visited Advision to present his new mini-Moog synthesizer and I bought his own display model from him. I wrote a strict 8-part fugue for it in G major and laid down rhythm on about 4 tracks. Then I played in all the other 'voices' on different synthesizer sounds on the other 20 and went to mix. It did sound startling and original. WH Smith not only used it but adopted it as their signature-tune.

Liz's foreboding about films proved not entirely justified when I was offerred a film for Anglia TV, a documentary called 'Trail to Survival'. I scored it for organ, piano, harpsichord, Moog, woodwind and rhythm section and David Katz booked a young pianist fresh from the Academy called Rick Wakeman, who was excellent. The Moog was sitting on top of the organ and I said to him:

'Why don't you play both at once. You'd make a fortune.'

He did.

I wrote some tracks for 'Craven A' with absurdly difficult timing complications and this prompted me to attempt an essay on the subject. I was fascinated by the relation of film timings to music and called it:

'Music is the mathematics of emotion.'

Graham Baker showed me an ad he'd produced for KP nuts. It featured children riding chopper bikes.

'What could you do with it?'

'Could you lend me one of the bikes to record?'

'Record the bike?'

'Yes. I could record all the different sounds that a chopper bike makes, put them on 24 separate tracks and add a rhythm section.'

'Try it.'

We called the tracks: bell, spokes with spanner, frame clang, pedal whirr and so on, eventually adding a solid rock-guitar solo. It ended with the spokes slowing down most intriguingly , all giving slightly different pitches.

At Ernest's end-of-course event my contribution was the concert-work:

'KP Nuts.'

I received a call from Ridley Scott who had made some cinema ads for SR Toothpaste, shot in the highlands of Scotland to appear like Russia. It seemed appropriate to write in full orchestral feature-film style with a strong flavour of Moussorgsky. Quite how appropriate was only revealed some six years later when I was invited to score 'The Duellists'. In the retreat from Moscow sequence one shot seemed strangely familiar. I turned to Ridley in the viewing-theatre and he grinned at me:

'You're right, it's a shot from SR. Why do you think you got the job?!'

I was enjoying life in Bolton Studios but spending hardly any time at the castle. The marriage was no longer working and Mavis had started to realise that I wasn't coming back.

We agreed to separate. She wanted to move out of the castle and live in the studio since she had taken up sculpture and painting and it would be perfect for her. What could I say? I put 40 Hans Place on the market and reconsidered. I had nowhere to live. In Cornwall I'd decided that I wanted to live in the country and write serious music. Perhaps the opportunity was being forcibly presented to me? My parents were still in Brighton and growing old and I had felt more and more that it would be good to be near them. The countryside in Sussex was where I had always longed to be. I rang and asked if I could stay with them and do some house-hunting, took a train from Victoria and bought Sussex Life from the bookstall. As the train rattled down to Brighton I thought:

'What would I most like in the world?'

I'd sometimes dreamed of a watermill in a quiet valley with bluebell woods, a lake and a waterfall, meandering paths, a stream and wild birds singing, an impossible dream but...

I opened Sussex Life - and there it was:

Highbridge Mill, set in 5 acres of informal woodland, originally a watermill with wheel and machinery dating from 1810, lake, stream, waterfall and mill-pond.

I drove out from Brighton to an address just South of Cuckfield and turned down a long tree-lined drive - just to have a look. I parked next to two nearby cottages and walked towards the mill-house. A silver-haired lady of about 60 was coming out of the house to her car.

'I hope you will forgive the intrusion, but I saw the house advertised and wondered if it was still for sale?'

'Oh, that's perfectly all right but I'm afraid I've just sold it. I'm on my way to see the estate agent. Might I ask why you're interested?'

'Well I'm a composer and I'm looking for a place to write and this looks as if it would be fantastic.'

'What a pity! You're exactly the sort of person to whom I wanted to sell. It's so utterly inspiring here. Do have a wander.'

I wandered down along to the waterfall where a plank bridge crossed three sluice-gates. One could look down along a ravine banked by moss and fern-covered rocks. A gigantic beech overhung a deep black pool with eddies of water swirling down through pebbles of a shallow river-bed.The house had an oak verandah coated with lichen on which climbed an immense Albertine rose. It was exquisite.

'Well never mind, there'll be others.'

I had no distractions living with my parents, just regular simple meals and some gardening. A piano was still in my room and manuscript paper. I devised a scheme of exercises to get myself going in the right direction:

1.Write a piano sonata in the style of Beethoven

2.Write a string trio or quartet in the style of Bartok

3.Write an oboe quartet in the style of Mozart

4.Write a 12-tone piece in the style of Schoenberg

5.Write a choral work in the style of Bach or Walton

6.Write a concerto movement work in the style of Frank Martin or Stravinsky

7.Write a folk-song arrangement for small orchestra like Delius, Vaughan-Williams or Holst

8.Write a 2-part invention in the style of Bach

9.Do counterpoint exercises from a good text book

10.Do 2 hours a day piano practise

11.Do 4 hours a day composition

12.Do 2 hours a day thought and reading

Observe and create complete pieces as structures, not individual mind-blowing sounds and tunes and harmonies!

I started on number one by taking out my mother's old edition of the Beethoven sonatas and choosing one I didn't much like- B flat, Book One - and the same day paid a visit to Christine to ask if she'd give me some more piano lessons. I told her I was going to attempt a piano sonata:

'I don't think you need any more lessons from me but why don't you make it a two-piano sonata and we can both play it.'

Two-piano was quite different, a big pallette, a big sound that always made one think of Bartok. All right, perhaps a sonata in the form of Beethoven but with the harmonic language of Bartok. That'd be a good exercise! But in C major, not B flat, Bartok would never write it in B flat! I wrote it quite quickly as if for years I'd been deprived of composing properly ( I suppose I had):

Sonata for two Pianos.In four movements: Allegro-Andante-Scherzo-Presto

I took it up to Christine to try it out, but she wouldn't:

'I can see it's just a pencil manuscript and I can't read that. I'm sure you need to do a great deal more work on it and get it properly printed and then we could schedule rehearsals and prepare for a performance.'

'I can't work like that Christine. It's finished, it's ready, it's playable and I really want to hear it to make any adjustments before I lose interest!'

'What do you mean, lose interest?'

With the inner source of dammed-up emotional powers and the feelings often over-ridden by burdens and obligations-even if only emotional ones-the only free channel left is to pour you feelings into music. Even sympathy towards yourself becomes constricted and those towards others severely practical if not totally lost. Driving on seems the whole channel for your great energy, nothing else seems allowed to stand in the way of your ambition.

No, she wouldn't play it and it was to wait for another 24 years before the first performance by its composer and Wayne Marshall at The King's Lynn Festival 1995.

I'd also summoned up the courage to write Christine a Partita and Inventions a deux voix, but we didn't get that far.

Undeterred I embarked on Exercise 2. I'd employed the oboe player, Celia Nicklin, on a number of recordings and she'd once cautiously suggested that I might write a piece for her.

'Why not an Oboe Quintet?'

I attacked it at once and again found it easy to write fluently:

Oboe Quintet. G major, in three movements: Allegro-Lento-Vivace.

This time I didn't feel the need to refer to Beethoven. I rang Celia and she said she'd be interested to read it through. We arranged a session with a string quartet at the house of eccentric recording engineer and viola da gamba player Adam Skeaping in Barnes. Everybody seemed to think it was all right but nothing further happened and I started to realise that in order to get performances one needs to pay out money or get grants or be sponsored or have a record company. Players themselves would be pleased to play if paid to do so but probably wouldn't rush around to organise any of these things of their own accord. In this sense it was very much like doing TV or commercials or films except that there was no flow of money available to pay for it!

I had gone on looking at houses through the Summer without seeing anything remotely as interesting as the mill, which I couldn't get out of my mind. One Monday I followed another of my dangerous compulsions and for no reason drove out to look at it again. I parked by the two cottages and walked towards the mill-house and with identical timing to the first visit the silver-haired lady came out heading for her car.

'Good morning, please forgive my intrusion. Perhaps you remember that I came out here once before and saw the house. I've never stopped thinking about it.'

'Well how odd!. I do remember, because you called here at the moment I thought I had sold it. In fact after the whole summer the wretched buyer has just this moment pulled out. He can't get a mortgage. I'm just going to see the estate agent to put it on the market again.'

'I'll buy it and I'll pay cash. I'll give it to you right now if you'll promise to sell it to me.'

She stopped in her tracks.

'A non-returnable deposit? That's very generous. Suppose you find on inspection that there's something wrong? What then? By the way my name's Marjorie Hervey.?'

'Well I'll lose out Miss Hervey, but I won't pull out, because I've fallen in love with it.'

I signed a cheque and gave it to her. She looked at me:

'Come in and have a cup of tea.'

The sale went through and I made over the balcony room of the watermill in the meditative colours of saffron and green. I moved in the Baldwin grand piano which Julian Lee had found for me and placed my old London writing-table next to it. I had my stereo and an armchair and not much else. The entire space containing dining-room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom only measured about 12' x 12'. Downstairs there was a guest-room with a door to the garden but the rest of the building was unconverted and full of machinery.

I had a visit from the curate of Holy Trinity, Cuckfield, the Reverend Charles. He scouted around the mill with some suspicion.

'Do you play that grand piano?'

'Yes, I'm a pianist and composer.'

'Are you a properly trained, classical pianist?.'

I played him a Chopin Nocturne in D flat.

'Are you married.'

'Separated.'

'And what sort of music do you 'compose'?

(using the word 'compose' made him look as if he'd swallowed a raw onion.)

'I want to move beyond atonalism and create wonderful melodic music for the widest possible audience.'

'I dont't think they will like that.'

'Who's they.'

He smiled, what they call in novels, 'enigmatically'.

'You should go back to London where you belong.'

'I only moved in yesterday.'

In 1974, much to my surprise, the PCC and congregation commissioned an Order for Holy Communion(Series 3). It was instigated by Dick Walker, Canon Fisher and the Reverend Charles. It has been happily used in the church ever since.

I received a gold-embossed invitation to a black-tie dinner from the local chairman of the Conservative Party. I regaled the company with anecdotes of sixties London and they seemed to find me highly entertaining. The gentlemen retired for brandy and cigars.

'I hear you have bought a most beautiful property. Many congratulations! We're delighted to welcome you into our community. I knew about you immediately because you went to Brighton College with my son.'

'I didn't go to Brighton College, I went to Brighton Grammar School.'

'Oh my God, I've got the wrong Blake!! I wonder if you'd mind leaving?'

My most earnest intention was to learn more about the serious art of composition and having given up the idea of USC I decided to investigate nearby Sussex University. I made an appointment with the Bursar:

'I want to study strict counterpoint, harmony and form in serious music with a view to taking a degree and possibly heading for a doctorate. Would you have such a course?'

'We have music courses but you would need to do 50% sociology.'

'What does that involve?'

'It teaches how the musician relates to society.'

'I wouldn't want to do that. I know all about how the musician relates to society. I've been doing nothing else for 10 years and I've moved down here in order to escape from it.'

'All our courses insist on 50% sociology.'

'Well I suppose I could use that 50% to write a critical thesis on how the musician relates to society. It certainly needs doing.'

'Would you need a grant?'

'Is that what one should do?'

'It depends on your situation. Do you have an income of any sort?'

'I have a royalty income which I supplement by doing commercial work, mostly for television.'

'How much do you make a year?'

'I suppose about £30,000.'

'Good God, that's more than the entire faculty get! Are you mad? You're actually working for television and making a fortune. Why the hell would you want to come here?'

'I want to advance academically in the field of serious music without reference to commercialism. I thought universities were dedicated to the disinterested study of knowledge.'

'Everybody here is dedicated to trying to get into television mate! Can you get me in?'

I turned my attention to conducting. Although I conducted constantly I had never had lessons or gained a stick-technique. I wrote to Erich Leinsdorf, a conductor I much admired, and asked if he would give me conducting lessons?

'Dear Mr Blake, There is only one way to learn conducting and that is by doing it. Some people can, some people can't.'

My mother played once a week in an amateur string orchestra in Hove and they had temporarily lost their conductor.

'Would you like to to come and conduct us?'

'I'd love to.'

It is very easy to conduct top-level orchestras like the Philharmonia or the RPO, since they can play to near-perfection without so much as looking at you. It's quite another matter to conduct a rehearsal orchestra where you have to indicate every beat and every nuance. The Hove String Orchestra were very kind and allowed me to practise with them and on them. They had a terrific library and week by week we worked through the wonders of the string repertoire, the stick gradually becoming second nature to me.

I wanted to learn the violin so that I could write better for strings and was recommended to a teacher of the instrument called Ted Greenhow whose son had been at school with me:

'Would you come out to the mill once a week and give me a lesson?'

We started on Grade 1, first position, and I practised about half an hour every morning, slowly playing more and more advanced music until a couple of years later I managed to scrape my way through Mozart's wonderful Quartet in D minor K.421. I had had a longing to do this ever since hearing the Amadeus years previously.

Sometimes Ted and I played violin duets, even the Bach Double (although fortunately this is not in living memory!) and I wrote us some variations on a song: Variations on Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May

The commercial work in London really 'sponsored my studies' and I kept most of the contacts going. The system seemed to work well although it took a lot of energy, since I was in effect doing two or more jobs. However the devotion to Yoga and a monk-like lifestyle made it possible and exciting. I was thrilled with what I was doing and saw myself as tremendously fortunate to be able to.

As a sort of thank you present I wrote 'Two Pieces for The Hove String Orchestra'.

Richard Frank rang me:

'There is a way of us getting 'Movement for Orchestra' recorded. In Ljubljana?'

'Where's that?'

'Slovenia. I have a friend, Samo Hubad, a very good conductor. You put up the money and I will arrange everything.'

'That's Iron Curtain. Why do we have to go there?'

'It's very cheap but very good, and we will have a record to play to the people that matter.'

I flew with Jugoslav Airlines on a smallish plane which got diverted to Belgrade. The announcements were in Serbo-Croat:

'Run! Geh' schnell!'

'What's happening?'

'Ve get train. Five minutes. Ve run.'

The streets were pitch-black and we ran madly towards the station. In the night we stopped for what seemed hours, soldiers shouted and waved machine-guns and people screamed. On the return journey we hit extreme turbulence from Franfurt. The wings flapped up and down and the plane would drop by hundreds of feet. Did it really have to be this difficult to get a new work recorded?

In fact the recording of Movement for Orchestrawas excellent. I took a copy of the disk to David Kingsley who was Vice-President of the RPO and through his good offices an orchestra at last agreed to programme it.

I was living an idyllic and peaceful lifestyle. I visited Chandra Sharma one day who said I was 'in a state of grace.' It felt like that. I would rise early and do an hour of Hatha Yoga, gradually achieving the Lotus position sitting and later whilst doing the head-stand. I would walk through the fields to the north of the stream, cross it and make my way back on the south. Breakfast was Muesli, chopped fruit, nuts and Bulgarian yoghourt with brown sugar. I would work at piano technique for an hour and violin for half an hour, have a pot of China tea with lemon and start doing counterpoint exercises, studying form and composing. After a light lunch I would do any business, phone calls,letters and shopping. Dinner would be mostly cheese and salad bought from the local health food shop and in the evening I would listen to Radio 3 or records, read my latest non-fiction book or just carry on composing. I didn't have a television.

I was reading Walter Piston's 'Counterpoint' one evening and was suddenly inspired by a section on the structure of melody. I thought that, contrary to given contemporary dogmas about music, it might still be possible to create an original melodic style, particular and personal to me. I took the well-known poem of Byron 'So we'll go no more a-roving' and set it to music with a simple melodic line. It worked. It was enchanting. I thought:

'I am only alive once and I should write regardless of dogmas, and if I have such a melodic gift, even if it is regarded as 'unfashionable' I should nevertheless write it, since it is a 'God-given gift' and I should use it.'

The song in fact proved to be the first trickle of an unending stream of creativity that lasted until nearly 2,000.

A producer called Arthur Solomon rang me. He and his partner Rafi had a company called Radius and were making a children's series for Thames TV with a mime artist called Ben Benison. The director was Rex Bloomstein and they were provisionally calling it:'The In-and-Out, Round-About and Up-and-Down-Man'. Some title!

'Would you like to come and have a look at it?'

It was to have no dialogue, just music. They had very little money and Liz was dubious. A year earlier I might have seen it as not worth doing, but the timing of the request was inspired. Perhaps I could experiment with my new melodic style.

I went to the cutting room and had a look. They had made two black-and-white silent movies, slightly amusing, slightly wan, slightly satirical- a present-day venture into the territory of Chaplin. I said immediately that I wanted to do them, but I wanted to use a classical piano trio: violin, cello and piano. This time the production team were dubious:

'Isn't that terribly old-fashioned?

'Yes it is, but to make mime come to life I want to allude to and satirise all sorts of classical thematic material which will make it funny and give it meaning and line. It absolutely won't be 'background' music it will be 'foreground' music.

'But shouldn't we be using guitars and drums and so on?'

'I want to write music with expressivity and flexibility, fitting exactly to the frame and yet not using a click-track, music that moves and sings and dances with the mime artist's own pulse and emotion. I'd like to compose the whole thing as chamber music in a simple melodic style:

'Who would you get to play it?'

'I have a truly marvellous Jewish violinist and I'm sure we can find an equally good cellist.'

Perhaps that helped to settle it since they were all Jewish/Israeli. There were to be 13 episodes of 7 minutes each. My violinist was Jack Rothstein.

Jack was the most highly regarded lead violinist in the London recording world. When I'd first started playing on orchestral sessions I'd see him from my piano stool at the back of huge string sections in Abbey Road or Shepperton. He'd be demonstrating the bowing, suggesting fingerings, talking and explaining, telling jokes in five or six languages and playing all the while in the most vibrant singing tone. His playing contained hints of the gipsy, of jazz, of the palm court, of Vienna, of some sort of extraordinary cosmopolitan background that had somehow condensed down into a supremely adaptable talent, utterly perfect for the session world, where any and every style possible may be demanded at the drop of a hat.

On one occasion during a playback he lapsed into the Franck Sonata for no apparent reason and I joined in from the other side of the studio. (How that work followed me around!) Another time he played the opening of Schubert's great Trio in B flat. I joined in gamely and the cellist Peter Willison picked it up too. It sounded fabulous and I wished we could play the whole work. As we moved from one studio to another it was a sort of game to try and catch the other person out, playing by ear or memory or improvising. Mostly what amused Jack was spotting where the composer had borrowed from - not something that composers in any way welcome(!), but pretty safe when they're in the box for playback.

He never talked about himself and I found out about his background by chance when I was in Montreal. Jack suggested I look up an old friend of his, Sacha, who I tracked down playing double-bass in a gipsy orchestra at the Hilton, a strikingly-tall Hungarian who could have been 45 or 85.

'Oh, Jacques La Roque, my dear, dear friend. What a talent! He grew up in Egypt and went to a French school, but he's really a mixture of Rumanian ,Hungarian, Palestian, French, Czech and English...maybe a bit of Italian? I led a concert band working all around the Middle East for ENSA during the war. When we got to Alexandria I was told of an amazing 16-year old boy who could play the clarinet like Benny Goodman, the violin like Stephane Grapelli, read anything, play anything...a marvel. We took him on and then were invited to appear at the London Palladium, with Jacques as the star turn- brilliant- but he wasn't satisfied! The next thing we know he's decided to stay in London and he's taking classical violin lessons from Max Rostal! A year later he's playing in the Boyd Neal Chamber Orchestra..and a year after that he's leading it! What a talent! If only he'd stayed with us!

Jack had in fact found his true forte as a leader. Sometimes he would be a soloist, but was less than comfortable. He loved to be amongst other players and was fascinated by every conceivable style of music. A rigidly classical chamber orchestra like the Boyd Neal couldn't feed this fascination, but working on recording sessions most certainly could, and did. When I began to use string sections for my film scores Jack would lead the orchestra for me. When I rang and asked if he'd do 'The Up and Down Man' he jumped at it.

At Jack's suggestion Peter Willison joined us to play the cello and I played the piano, simultaneously following a stop-watch balanced on the music stand. I booked Adam Skeaping's crazy studio again, which meant climbing three flights of stairs every time we listened to a playback, but nobody complained since it turned out to be fun.

The name was shortened to The Up and Down man

Leslie Hardcastle was still the brilliant manager of the NFT and rang to ask if I would like to provide a fanfare for the next London Film Festival. It needed to be loud to cover the noisy opening of the distinctive 'solid curtains' and last about 1 minute. I decided to compose a fughetta for eight brass and Leslie was enthusiastic. I thought immediately of the distinctive 'early' brass sound made by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble to which I would add some timps. I rang David Katz and asked him to 'fix' them. He refused:

'I will fix eight wonderful players for you darling.'

'No David, I don't want a group of session-players, I want the sound made by Philip Jones. It's completely different.'

Up till now everything I had ever recorded had been contracted for me by David.

'What's the problem?'

He wouldn't say, but I was somehow rocking the boat. He kept all the players on tap by promising that they got all the work, not just some of it. That's how it worked. We parted company. He had been a colossal help to me and I was sad, but for the first time I was introduced to a top musician from the serious classical world at the same level and this connection would later lead to the commissioning of the Sinfonietta and much else. Meanwhile The Philip Jones Brass Ensemble played Fanfare for the London Film Festival magnificently.

I had dinner at the Post Office Tower with Gerry Potterton, an animator from Canada who had ventured into making a feature film, 'The Rainbow Boys':

'Would you come over and look at it?'

'What, in Canada?'

'Yes. We'll fly you there for the day.'

It was minus 40 degrees and on the roof of the hotel I swam in a steaming floodlit pool surrounded by Christmas trees. The film was oddly quirky, three misfits in search of a gold-mine. They find it, lose all the gold and laugh uproariously. The lead actor was Donald Pleasance. It was shot in the forests of British Columbia and on completion we flew to Vancouver for the premiere where it was received with a certain amount of bewilderment. However I'd been able to record with excellent musicians from The Montreal Symphony Orchestra in a more classical manner than previously and had enjoyed it.

Gerry's real talent was animation and his company was busy making cartoon versions of Oscar Wilde's fairy stories. He showed me preliminary work for 'The Happy Prince'and asked if I'd like to score it. I met Mike Mills, the director assigned to the picture, and it was agreed that I would write two songs, one active and joyful as swallows swoop across a lake in summer, one sad and lamenting as the swallow wings its way back to Egypt in the autumn. The treatment was to be finished by mid-May and the layouts by the end of July when I would need to record.

I returned to Sussex very enthusiastic about the project, understanding that the company would send a contract. I thought the two songs should be for trebles and orchestra and spoke to Stephie Lengauer about using The Vienna Boys Choir. Once I started to think of the sad flying theme needed I at once turned to the haunting tune from Cornwall. It was so right for 'The Happy Prince' and the 'film symphony' had not got much further. I gave the tune a middle eight, a beginning and an end, provisionally called it 'Flying through the Air' and rang Gerry.

There was an embarassed pause.

'I'm afraid Mike has given the job to another composer. He'd forgotten to tell me'

'What?!'

'I'm sorry.'

'Who's he given it to?'

'Ron Goodwin.'

'Oh really. I know Ron.'

I rang him and explained that I'd not only been given the job but had already written two songs.

'Well that's the business isn't it mate? Tough.'

'I'll remember that Ron.'

'Walking in the Air' went back in the drawer.

James Forsyth was a playwright who lived with his wife Louise at the top of the hill in 'Old Place', near neighbours. They decided to turn their beautiful old barn into a theatre and I helped provide music for a nativity play. They liked what I did and asked if I would organise a May-time concert. I saw this at once as an opportunity to perform my beloved Schubert B flat and asked Jack and Peter if they'd come down. We were right in the middle of 'The Up and Down Man' so it would be easy to rehearse the Schubert on the end of a recording. I went out, bought a new Welmar upright piano and had it sent to the Barn. The theme of the concert was May and it started outside with a maypole dance. The barn had no acoustic and no heating, but the cherry blossom was in bloom, birds sang all around and fortunately it was beautiful weather. Guitarist Paul Gregory played Renaissance lute pieces; Christine Pembridge played 'May, charming May', 'Le Coucou' and some Beethoven; Mavis came down and read Thomas Hardy and Sassoon, and mezzo-soprano Kathleen Willson asked if I would compose her something. I set 'This is the delicate time of the year' by Cuckfield poet Judith Garrett and everybody was much taken with it.

I was invited to the next meeting of The Forsyth Barn Theatre steering committee. Beautiful Mrs. Garforth, the major's wife, expressed her amazement that I'd managed to persuade such tip-top musicians to come and play in a barn and thought the performance of the Schubert was the most wonderful thing she'd ever heard.

'But why aren't you composing and performing in major concert halls and on the BBC and that sort of thing?'

'Well I never really got going in the classical world and I've been working for years as a 'commercial' musician, writing for TV and films and playing on recordin sessions. I've only recently got away down here to try and re-find my own style of 'classical' composition. The song I wrote for the concert was the first 'art' song I'd written since I was at school.'

'Do you mean that you want to write music like Schubert and Beethoven and so on?'

'Well I suppose you could put it like that.'

'Well I think we are very lucky to have you here and I think the Barn Theatre should do everything it can to encourage you. May I suggest to the committee that 'Music in May' next year should be a complete concert of Howard's music specially written for the occasion?'

The motion was carried unanimously.

Perhaps because of the childish 'animated' quality of 'The Up and down Man' John and Marlene wanted me to meet master-animator Richard Williams, famous for his one-man feature-length masterpiece 'The Little Island', for the sequences in Tony Richardson's 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', and many years later for 'Who killed Roger Rabbit'. He played excellent jazz cornet as a hobby, had a passion for Gurdjieff, ran a film company at 13 Soho Square and was in enormous demand. I started to score one or two things for him: the credit sequence for 'The Pink Panther Strikes Again' which brought me into contact with Henry Mancini': 'Embassy American' with the RPO, counterpointing USA and UK themes (New York Celne award):'Samson'(Grand Prix du Cinema, Cannes).

One evening after work I asked why he hadn't gone on to make feature films like Disney.

'It's all downstairs Howard. I've been making the ultimate feature for 12 years. I've got voice tracks of Orson Welles, Vincent Price, Kenneth Williams, all sorts of stars. There are cans and cans of it shot.'

'What's the title?'

'Nasrudin.'

'What's that?'

'Nasrudin is an Arabic folk-hero, a bit like say Till Eulenspiegel, a fool who does everything backwards but it comes out forwards. The stories about him teach a Sufi way of looking at things.'

'Sufi?'

'Yes, Idries, whose brother Omar runs the company is the Prince of the Sufis and the greatest expert on it.'

'Could we see it?'

Dick asked his projectionist to stay on overtime. It was astoundingly brilliant hand-drawn animation, reel after reel of it. One amazing sequence drew 'the thief' trapped and hysterically trying to escape from turning wooden cogs and wheels inside a mill. Another had him attempting to pole-vault the dome of a mosque to steal the golden ball atop it. Another was of an army made up of Da Vinci's extraordinary war machines. But what was the story?

'Idries writes the story. Everything has a profound meaning. It's going to get there eventually.'

'What other films or books has Idries done? Does he really know what he's up to?'

'He's published a new translation of the Omar Khayyam, he's written books on secret societies and edited these Nasrudin stories into a book which I illustrated.'

'That's not exactly the experience you need to make a feature film. I can't see this ever fitting together and being released, but I think one could probably take a great deal of the material and turn it into something terrific. You need to create a new script.'

'Idries wouldn't be pleased if he heard that.'

I did some research. According to eminent authorities his 'translation' of the Omar Khayyam was a compound of two or three existing texts. His claim to be Lord High Prince of the Sufis and direct descendant of Mohammed also appeared to be somewhat in question. Sufism in one reference was assessed as 'taking the art of lying to a sublime level.' I didn't like the sound of it.

'I think you should look into the Shah brothers. Look at all this Persian 'magic' junk in your office. It's spooky!'

Somehow I got into Dick's brain. He did an audit, sacked Omar, appointed a mutual advertising friend, Carl Gover, to run the office, and took on lawyer Brian Lewis. The magic artifacts were bundled into a blanket and taken to Oxfam. I had dinner that night with Rula Lenska and Pavlik Stooshnoff, who ran an icon gallery and sold me one of St. George slaying the dragon. I gave it to Dick and it went up on the wall over his desk. Dick, Brian and I commandeered a 'script-room' in the basement, pinned up frames of all the sequences around the walls and began to discuss story-lines. We liked the Thief character and we liked the Grand Vizier and the great Mogul but they were all baddies. We needed a hero-figure on the side of good and the idea of a cobbler came into my head. I asked Dick if I should write something down on those lines.

'Sure, great idea, see what you come up with.'

At this moment a biker walked into the room, his face hidden by helmet and goggles. He dumped a package on the table and left. It was a message written in big letters cut out from a newspaper-just like an old-fashioned whodunnit:

'Three men are plotting against the work of the Great Master of Magic. The man who started this plot will die.'

Brian and Dick looked at me:

'That's you Howard.'

I tore it up and put it in the bin.

'Let's get on.'

Mavis and I were together again and had borrowed David Shaw's flat in Cadogan Gardens. That evening she went early to bed and left me typing the script.

TIN-TACK THE COBBLER

An Eastern Western

Written after seven and a half afternoon discussions with Richard Williams at 13 Soho Square, July 1973.

'Once upon a time there was a great country, ruled over by a great king. It was a land of high mountains, capped with snow and of broad, rich valleys plentiful with fruit....'

Around midnight I looked up and a dagger came out of the wall facing me, whistled at high speed through the air and hit the wall behind me with a resounding thunk. I was frozen with fear. It was a hallucination, but cold sweat had broken out on my face, my spine was shivering and my heart-beat semed to have moved up to about MM140. I cautiously turned to look at the wall. There was nothing there. I put the script away and went to bed:

'Is something wrong?'

'No, I'm fine.'

'You're sweating.'

'Yes.'

'Go to sleep.'

I lay staring at the ceiling and for no reason lifted the sheet. On its underside hundreds of swastikas in circles were revolving anti-clockwise. I put it down:

'Go to sleep!'

I made my way to Soho in the morning, turning round from time to time to see if I was being followed. I wanted my back against a nice brick wall. I saw myself in a mirror at Dick's reception and I was white as a sheet:

'What's the matter?'

'Nothing.'

'You're white as a sheet.'

I was shaking. Who could I talk to? I picked up the phone and rang Chandra Sharma. It was a long-shot because he never answered the phone:

'What's the matter Blake?'

I hadn't spoken and this made me even more nervous:

'Come over, right away.'

I told Chandra what was happening and he looked at me carefully:

'Who have you got involved with lately?'

I told him about Dick and the film.

'Somebody's mounting a psychic attack on you.'

'Is that possible?'

'They can do it to you Blake.'

'That makes me feel even worse. What can I do?'

'If you are riding a horse and someone whips it you can go out of control and have an accident, maybe the horse jumps off a cliff. If you stay still and never start to ride, the horse cannot move and you are safe. You have to stay still.'

'Do you think I can do that?'

'Yes, I believe you can do that Blake.'

Gradually the hallucinations stopped.

Dick liked the script a lot and wanted to buy it and we had lunch with Liz:

'I think Howard would rather be part of the team and go on working with you.'

'I'm prepared to pay £500 for it.'

'I don't think we'd want to do that.'

I went on composing tracks for Dick from time to time but Tin-Tack wasn't mentioned. I heard that it had been renamed 'Cobbler and the Thief' and lost touch, but some time in the late nineties he rang me:

'We're making 'Cobbler and the Thief' for Disney. I've got a studio of 100 animators working on it in Camden Town. Why don't you come over?'

A receptionist told me he was in a very important meeting but might find a moment. About an hour later he put his head round the door:

'Would you be interested in doing the music score?'

'I'd be pleased to talk about it.'

I sat in the reception for a hugely long time and eventually went home.

The distinguished contralto Helen Watts had moved into the cottage next door to me and we got on splendidly:

'Why don't you write me a song?'

'Maybe I could set a couple more songs by Judith Garrett?'

Cuckfield Church needed to raise money for a new spire and we volunteered to give a concert. I rehearsed for the first time with a singer of international standing: Purcell, Arne, Warlock, Schumann, Kabalevsky, Britten...and Three Sussex Songs by Howard Blake.

Jack and Peter were surprisingly enthusiastic about the proposed all-Howard Blake chamber-music programme. Jack asked me for a violin sonata, Peter asked for a set of cello variations, and I decided I would write my own full-scale Piano Trio, if only to dispel my obsession with Schubert's. Jack had other ideas about the piano trio however and explained that his great friend Kenneth Essex loved trout-fishing almost as much as playing the viola. Couldn't I possibly make it a Piano Quartet rather than a Trio? Then he could come down to the mill, spend some of his time fishing and some of it rehearsing. In his time Kenneth had played viola with the Hurwitz, the Gabrieli, the Georgian, the Haffner and the Aeolian - a marvellous player. There was really no answer except to make it a piano quartet, since they were all playing for love rather than a fee.

I wrote three pieces: Diversions for cello and piano; Sonata in G minor for violin and piano, and Piano Quartet in A minor. To this I added 'Suite the Up and Down Man', and May 11th in Forsyth's Barn witnessed a complete concert of four world premieres!

MUSIC IN MAY A programme of new, melodic music by Howard Blake

Two members of the audience were remarkably struck by the new music: One was the editor of 'The Up-and-Down-Man', Jack Dennis, who proposed a recording of the Quartet and Diversions and released it with vast enthusiasm on a specially-created label, Firecrest, later in the year. The other was an eminent local choral director, Janet Canetty-Clarke:

'Your music is like a breath of fresh air! Would you consider composing a work for my choir?'

'Well that's very kind.'

'I conduct The Ditchling Choral Society and we put on regular concerts- 'Matthew Passion', 'Dream of Gerontius' and so on. I know you could write something wonderful for us.'

'What would be the text?'

'You choose a text. What I have in mind is putting on another concert of your music but with the new choir-piece as the main item, but we must do this Piano Quartet too. It's just marvellous! The Norman Hay Hall is very good, part of St. Francis Hospital, we could put it on there.'

I sent Marlene a copy of the Piano Quartet disk and she rang me:

'Wouldn't it make wonderful dance music?'

'I had never thought about it.'

She went to see The London Contemporary Dance Theatre at Sadler's Wells one night and gave a copy to Robert North, the principal dancer and choreographer. He made both works into ballets: Diversions (Ballet) in 1974 for LCDT and Reflections (to the music of the piano quartet) for Ballet Rambert in 1976. There was also 'Meeting and Parting' (Ballet)(to the music of the 12 Piano Pieces), The Annunciation (to music from Stronger than the Sun in 1979. The 3-act ballet for the new Opera House in Gothenburg, Eva (to music from the Violin Concerto, Benedictus, and Toccata and the Piano Quartet) in 1996, and most famously The Snowman Ballet (in Gothenburg, Verona and Scotland) and The Snowman Stage Show(Sadler's Wells, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Manchester, 1997-2008).

Gerry Potterton was directing one of the Oscar Wilde series himself and to make up for the loss of 'The Happy Prince' offerred me 'The Remarkable Rocket', a parable about vanity, the rocket thinking himself the most important firework of a royal display but being so self-obsessed that he misses the moment and goes off unheeded long after the event. Timing is everything.

David Niven was the narrator and the many character voices were all taken by Graham Stark, but it was over-wordy and sly satires on social pretension are not for the very young. However, I had scored my first cartoon film and the experience proved invaluable when I came to 'The Snowman'.

The flamboyant David Kingsley was a man who had worn many hats: President of the London School of Economics Debating Society, media adviser to both Indira Ghandi, President of India, media adviser to Kenneth Kaunda, President of Zambia, sometime speech writer and media-adviser to the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, founder and director of the advertising agency Kingsley, Manton and Palmer, instigator of the Social Democrat Party and vice-chairman of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He asked me to look at a book he had produced called 'The English Difference'. It was a book more-or-less about 'what makes the English different', written largely by the humourists Paul Jenkins and John Gorham, but with innumerable contributors to the lavish art-work: Michael Foreman, Bill Tidy, Richard Usborne, David Gentleman, Anna Pugh, a huge list. I suppose one should call it a 'coffee-table book', very 'sixties' and very pop-art and very flippant and very iconoclastic. An establishment friend of mine from schooldays took a huge dislike to it. But I liked it and when David asked if I could 'set it to music' I jumped at the idea. That night I had booked to hear Beethoven's Ninth at the RFH conducted by Rudolf Kempe, but he had gone sick and the last-minute conductor didn't appeal. I went next-door to the Purcell Room and saw that Tristan Fry was playing percussion with a vocal group called 'The Scholars'. They were an absolutely top-class 5-singer vocal quintet but they sang a rather wacky crossover programme veering from Gesualdo to 'West-Side Story' and I started to imagine 'modern madrigals' for them. Arriving home I sketched the first three of a collection, both words and music. David named it 'The New National Songbook'. and they recorded it with me, performed it at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, on BBC Radio 3, on the Esther Rantzen TV show and in numerous concerts.

'We were watching the birds...'

For Christmas 1975 I wrote words and music for Lullaby, a Christmas narrative. Perhaps I could launch my dormant song with an a cappella vocal group? Enshrined in the work was the song, on this occasion to the words: 'Sleep my little child'. The work was well-received but nobody offerred to record it or perform it again. 'Walking in the air' went back in the drawer for a second time. The following year I knocked up a Scholars Christmas Medley, with 'early music' vsrions of 'I saw mummy kissing Santa Claus' and such like. Rather ghastly but it went down rather better!

Paul Hamburger at BBC Radio 3 programmed a live concert of 'The New National Songbook' with The Scholars and commissioned a new song for the occasion. I wrote a very dark political lyric in a song for 5-part vocal group and ensemble called [op.275]'From the Cradle to the Grave'[/0p.275]:

From the cradle...

On another occasion one of the girls in the group was wearing a T-shirt which read:

oh please do not kiss me oh please do not kiss oh please do not oh please do oh please oh

which I set as a 5-part a cappella glee, Oh please do not kiss me or 'T-shirt slogan'(1978).

Michael Leighton Jones, the baritone in the group was a friend and supporter and asked if I could write something for baritone and harpsichord. I responded with an 8-minute scena to words by Robert Browning: 'A Toccata of Galuppi's', which we performed in a BBC Radio 3 recital along with some jolly Warlock and some very gloomy Pfitzner, perhaps my only appearance as a concert harpsichordist!

Jack Rothstein introduced me to a harpist called Annabelle Etkind and asked if I would consider composing a piece for harp and violin. Harp and violin- that's so Welsh I thought - rather foolishly as it happened. 'Penillion' is an ancient song-variation form associated with the harp. Why not have the violin as the singer? They performed it at a major Jewish charity event in Grosvenor Square and her mother Evelyn was entranced:

'You're so brilliant!'

'Thank you.'

'And thank you for writing such a lovely piece for my daughter.'

'A pleasure.'

'I hear your brother lives in Jerusalem.'

'Yes he does.'

'So are you Jewish?'

'No, I'm afraid not.'

'What a pity! What we couldn't do for you if your were Jewish!

Elona Thomas was now living with the Welsh tenor Jeffrey Talbot and the three of us met for dinner. Unexpectedly and magnificently he burst into Donizetti right in the middle of the restaurant.

'What a marvellous voice!'

'Thank you.'

'Why don't I write an opera for you?'

'That would be jolly.'

Jeffrey was very jolly; a large man with a large smile and a natural high tenor voice that would sail in full voice up to a top D.

I had never really thought about composing an opera. In the sixties and seventies the full-blown operatic voice with its immense over-cultivation and high-octane power was utterly incompatible with the down-market, blue-collar culture of rock 'n' roll. Opera had become an elite enclave for the very rich and I thought that if I were to write an opera it would probably have to be a satire on the entire genre. Next day I was standing on the platform of grey and drafty Haywards Heath Station:

'The next train from Platform 3 has been delayed due to a points failure.'

I looked at five forlorn travellers standing on it. Just right for an opera cast! And standing ready to sing. On a platform! A young PA (soprano obviously), an older business-woman (contralto), a young city-type (tenor), a scruffy-looking biker (character baritone perhaps?) and the Station-Master (definitely basso profundo). I noticed two girls serving in the buffet. (mezzos I should think.) I would set Haywards Heath Station to music!

Libretto and music for a one-act opera 'The Station' took shape in my mind. I would put it on in Forsyth's Barn for the next Music in May!

'Salvia superba...'

My brother Philip had shown an interest in the plight of the Jews before his mental breakdown in 1953. At the suggestion of his Jewish curate-mentor he had mail-ordered a book on the Holocaust and he had shown it to me. It contained appallingly graphic photographs of the extermination and an intense horror was aroused within him. After his National Service in the British Army he went to Oxford to read Christian Theology but increasingly found the teaching and the current principles of what was called 'New Criticism' very hard, if not impossible to accept. He had come to believe that the first Christians were Jews and that the Jewish-Christian Movement was the 'real' Christianity. Oxford had not by any means 'caught up' with this view and after the first year there he went on a working holiday to a kibbutz in Israel and decided to stay.

At Kibbutz Hagoshrin he dug trenches, picked fruit, danced Israeli folk dances and sang Israeli folk-songs. He was rapidly learning Hebrew and was able to do simultaneous translations of films. People talked to him and, unlike his life in England, he felt wanted, useful and a part of society. He had given away all his belongings (such as they were) in the interests of the communal spirit and he didn't have to fight because Israel was not at war. Yet. After a year or so he returned to his Oxford college to read Hebrew and Arabic for about two terms and then went back to Israel for good.

He was introduced to Esher Abitbol, an orthodox Morroccan Jew slightly older than himself with a severe defect in one eye. For the first time he found a woman who appreciated him and loved him. They got married and had three children, David, Michael and Helen.

Esther came back to Brighton with him to have an eye operation and Philip and I had a chance to talk:

'Are you still Christian?'

'Secretly yes, but I have chosen to be Jewish because we live in the Jewish part of Jerusalem.'

'Are you bringing up your children as Jews?'

'Yes.'

'Do you go to a synagogue?'

'Yes.'

'So you have become Jewish?'

'Yes. I have become a Jew.'

'Jesus believed that every single person in the world is a child of God, whereas the Jews believe that only Jews are chosen by God. Which do you believe?'

He was silent for a very long time. I asked him again.

'Only the Jews are chosen by God.'

My heart sank when he said this.

In 1967 the first Arab war against Israel broke out and as an Israeli Jew Philip was compelled to fight. He believed in the cause and was happy to do so, meeting fellow-soldiers at the bus-stop to Bethlehem and taking part in the seizing of it on behalf of Israel. His problems with pacifism had dispersed. He was fighting for the oppressed Jews, regaining their rightful land, bequeathed to them by God.

In 1972 I was in my 'state of grace' period and I visited them in their flat in Kiryat Hayovel.

'It's the Sabbath and you can't turn the light on or off.'

'Why not?'

'Because you can't.'

'Oh.'

David was 12 and misbehaved slightly. Esther screamed:

'Hit him! hit him!'

My brother hit him across the face with all his strength. I was appalled:

'If you do that again while I'm here I'll kill you.'

'Children have to be disciplined.'

'Not like that they don't. Our mother taught us the Christian values of compassion, mercy and kindness, you had a liberal English education, you went to Oxford and you have no possible excuse for behaving like that.'

'Esther is my wife and she requires it of me.'

'I'm horrified.'

A stray puppy was crying outside the door. I picked it up and brought it in to Esther:

'Where do you take stray animals in Jerusalem?'

'You don't.'

'What do you mean?'

'I don't want that filthy, flea-ridden thing in my house. Get it out.'

'But it'll die.'

'So what. It's only an animal.'

'That's not the Christian view of animals, or people come to that.'

'Hitler was a Christian and he killed all the Jews.'

'He was an atheist-pagan and he persecuted the Christians.'

'He was a catholic and catholics are Christians.'

I started to take a greater interest in Second World War history and what exactly had happened within my life-time.

In 1974 I thought I should try once again to keep a relationship going. I asked Philip if he'd like to take a week off and accompany me on a tour of the Holy Land. We visited the wailing wall and the temple site, the Templar stables and the Al Aksa mosque. We took a bus to Nazareth, swam in the sea of Galilee and in a temperature of around 124 degress Fahrenheit climbed up the cliffs above Qumran, where the Dead Sea scrolls were found.

We talked a lot and Philip told me had changed his name to Zion.

'But your name is Philip.'

'My name is Zion.'

I had a day to myself and wandered round the old city. Philip and I had been been so strongly brought up Christian that it was hard to believe how much he could have changed. But then I had changed too. Was I still a Christian? I didn't really know. After Philip's trauma I had stopped attending church except to play the organ. Then that had gone too and after leaving home I had delved into alternative belief systems. I'd been more agnostic than anything else, and pretty cynical and capitalist through my commercial success period. Then Jung and his individuation theory had been a great influence, Chandra Sharma with transcendental Yoga had been another. Right at this moment I was being asked to create a choral work and instead of looking at Christian texts I'd been looking at a crazy book called 'Towards the One', some sort of concocted liturgy for comparative religion. I realised Jews did not believe in Jesus Christ, but then did I? I wasn't at all sure.

I saw a doorway marked 'Ancient Law Courts' and bought an entrance ticket from a nun:

'Vous pouvez entrer. Je vous suivrai en quelques moments.'

I climbed down wide stone stairs cut out of rock, worn by countless millions of feet over centuries. I was in an enormous underground space, more like a cave than a room. Every inch of the floor was scratched with gaming scores and tallies.

'And for his raiment they cast lots.'

I stood still and shivers went down my back. They didn't go away, they continued and my hair stood on end. Why? There was nothing there.

'Excusez-moi Monsieur. Vous vous tenez sur le point exact sur lequel le Christ a ete condamne a mort. Bougez s'il vous plait.'

On my last two days we travelled north to Nahariya near Acre. I met a crowd of Esther's relatives and acrimonious discussion took place over the role of England in regard to Israel. We stayed in a flat belonging to Esther's sister and I woke in the night. I opened the window onto palm trees and silent dusty streets. I thought of my brother and was sad. I remembered his breakdown and the hospital. What was it called? St.Francis! How odd. I was being asked to do a concert of my work in the very place he had been treated. I had a sudden remembrance of the ‘Canticle of the Sun’ by St Francis, which so wonderfully praises God as revealed in nature. In this country Nature was at its most vivid, a matter of life and death. I would write the work as some sort of act of atonement. A revelation.

Returning next day to London I went from Heathrow to the Franciscan library near Victoria, found ‘Il Cantico del Sole’ in its original early Italian and began to set it to music as The Song of Saint Francis

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra gave Movement for Orchestra its first concert performance at The Fairfield Hall, Croydon on September 15th, conducted by Arthur Davison, just about 10 years after I'd written it. It went down quite well and as a result I received a commission to write a 'Toccata' for their 30th anniversary. The orchestra had been founded in 1946 by Sir Thomas Beecham and I felt most proud to have been asked.

The premiere of The Song of Saint Francis took place as planned at the Norman Hay Hall, St. Francis Hospital, Haywards Heath, Sussex on 8th May 1976 with The Ditchling Choral Society accompanied by two pianos played by John Walker and the composer, conducted by Janet Canetty-Clarke. Jack Rothstein, Kenneth Essex and Peter Willison played the Piano Quartet with him, and Suite 'The Up and Down Man was played without Ken as a piano trio. Jack played Pennillion with Annabelle Etkind and the choir also sang songs from the 'The New National Songbook' and an a cappella setting of The Prayer of St. Francis. To bring the concert up to its appropriate length the composer had composed Dances for Two Pianos specially for the occasion and played them with Janet. The concert was a great success and sold out.

The Song of Saint Francis was particularly well received and Janet asked if I would orchestrate it for a major performance in Worth Abbey alongside the Mozart Requiem the following year. On examining the scoring I was convinced that Mozart's instrumentation could work for it by replacing the two basset-horns with bassoons and adding certain percussion instruments to reflect the different elements characterised in the verses.

I set to work.

On September 15th under the conductor Hans Vonk, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra gave the premiere of 'Toccata' to celebrate their 30th anniversary. Perhaps it was not quite what they had expected. They had asked for a showpiece like Britten's 'Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra' and this is to some extent what I attempted. However it didn't quite turn out like that. It was 20 minutes long, long enough to be called a Concerto for Orchestra and bristled with modern cross-rhythms and devices from jazz, rock and film. Hans Vonk clearly took an immense dislike to it and at the end of the performance threw the score on the floor and stamped off without bowing. A little ungracious!

At the time I was interested in gematria and celestial mathematics and I used a complicated formula to create the form. It is an 84-bar tune which divides into the magic numbers 4, 7 and 12. I stuck rigidly to the formula , but have to admit that such formulas tend to be an impediment rather than an asset. Composers Christopher Gunning and Stanley Myers, both coming from the same composing stable, just loved it, and I think the orchestra did to some extent as well. It received a favourable review from Edward Greenfield, who thought it original:

'It introduces the instruments of the orchestra but not in their conventional roles.'

Lynn Seymour was prima ballerina at The Royal Opera House and the most marvellous dancer. I saw her first in a rehearsal there of Kenneth MacMillan's 'Song of the Earth'. I didn't know it was her but from the second she came on stage I was riveted. She was at the height of her powers and famous above all for having partnered Rudolf Nureyev in 'Romeo and Juliet'. I met her because she and Robert North had agreed to dance a 'pas de deux' to the Andante from my Piano Quartet as part of Margot Fonteyn's farewell tour. I went to see them perform it and Lynn asked if I would interested to create a ballet with her. She had been asked to choreograph a work to celebrate the Queen's Royal Jubilee. I had an idea for it and wrote scenario and score of 'The Court of Love'. Lynn choreographed it for the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet with David Bintley as The Knave. Barry Wordsworth conducted the premiere at a Royal Gala on 26 April. I was honoured to have dinner with Princess Margaret and to meet the luminaries of the ballet world: Dame Ninette de Valois, Sir Frederick Ashton, Sir Kenneth Macmillan and Sir Robert Helpmann. The ballet was well-received and toured succesfully for a couple of years.

I got a call from Ridley Scott:

'I've made a feature film with David and we'd like you to do the score.'

'Oh gosh Ridley, I've really sort of given up doing films.'

'What are you doing?'

'I'm writing a ballet for the Queen's Jubilee.'

'We'd like to show you the film. It's looking terrific.'

'I'm terribly busy. Do you want to come down to the mill?'

'What mill?'

'I'm living in old water mill in Sussex.'

'That sounds great. David'll love it. How do we get there?'

'Get on a train to Haywards Heath and I'll pick you up at the station.'

I was reluctant to do it, because I could see it taking me away from my newly-won freedom and my 'real' music. The two arms of my career were starting to fight each other.

David Puttnam fell in love with Highbridge Mill:

'Does it work?'

'Yes it does.'

'Wow, let's get it going!'

I showed them how to open the sluices and the great iron wheel lumbered into motion. We spent the afternoon playing with it.

'Fantastic! I want one. Can I buy it off you?'

'No you can't!'

David scoured the land for a similar mill. He found one in Ireland and got so infatuated with 'the countryside' that as Lord Puttnam he was to become President of the 'Council for the Preservation of Rural England.' The boy from Ilford did good.

Next morning I was at RSA in Lexington Sreet and instead of a watermill we were playing with a Steinbeck flatbed viewer. I saw the first shots of the film and realised that it was the most beautiful film I'd ever seen. David was in terrific form:

'We want to give you a virtually free hand to write a great classical score. We want the end credits to be magnificent, like a new Wagner's 'Liebestod' from 'Tristan and Isolde.'

'How long do you want them to be?'

'As long as you want. I'll keep the credits going till the music ends.'

No composer on earth could resist such an offer.

I started work and recorded the score with John Richards at CTS Wembley April 12-14th. Ridley and David was delighted and wrote:

NOT JUST GOOD - IT'S BLAKE!

'The Duellists' was a great success at the Cannes Festival and won the Special Jury Prize.Ridley had made a dauntingly-brilliant entree into feature films and never looked back.

The premiere of The Song of Saint Francis took place on 15th May in Worth Abbey and I met the great tenor Richard Lewis who was singing the tenor part in Mozart's Requiem. The Abbot, Victor Farwell, invited us into his room for a Benedictine:

'How dare you write a work for the opposition?'

'What do you mean?'

'St. Francis. He's the opposition.'

'I'm sorry, I'd no idea.'

'Would you write an oratorio for the 1500th anniversary of St Benedict?'

'When is it?'

'1980. He was born in 480AD.'

'I don't know anything about him.'

'You can come and stay with us and we can tell you all about him.'

'All right.'

Richard Lewis was listening:

'Write a great tenor part and I'll sing it. But it must be rewarding, demanding. And I'd like some speech in it.'

'All right.'

I'd already agreed to do it.

On the strength of 'The Duellists' Ridley was immediately offerred the sci-fi film 'Alien' and he asked if I would score it. I went down to Shepperton and looked at the set with him. I agreed I would like to work with him on it and would ask Liz to negotiate a contract. However, his producer was not user-friendly like David. He explained to me that Twentieth Century Fox had its own talent and its own stable of composers. I was not one of them. Jerry Goldsmith was and he was going to do the score. Ridley found he had no power to contradict this and Liz said she could do nothing.

Lynn Seymour visited me at Highbridge Mill one day to tell me that she had been asked to create a television ballet for the BBC 'Omnibus'programme.

'Would you be interested in composing a score?'

'What's the scenario?'

'I don't have one but I want it to be as erotic and sensual as possible. Have you got any ideas?'

I had written the scenario for our ballet 'The Court of Love' created for Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet for the Queen's Silver Jubillee so this wasn't as surprising as it might have been!

'How about using an erotic poem? For instance W.B.Yeats's 'Leda and the Swan'?'

'Read it to me.'

I took down my 'Little Treasury of Modern Poetry', presented to me when I won the 'Headmaster's Reading Prize' at school. I don't think he would have approved.

'A sudden blow; the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed by the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power before the indifferent beak could let her drop?'

Lynn loved it:

'I will find the most beautiful boy and girl to dance it and in the middle we can have the poem read over the music by Derek Jacobi. How would you score it?'

'Well if it's going to have words over it, it shouldn't intrude too much. Perhaps a string quartet?'

'Marvellous!'

I started work and recorded 'Leda and the Swan'in July at Lime Grove with the Delme Quartet. Unfortunately the programme director, Bob Lockyer, didn't take kindly to the idea of the poem:

'No we can't have a poem in a ballet. Anyway we don't have any budget for it.'

It was excluded, which was a pity because without it the ballet didn't make much sense. It was shown on TV and a newspaper headline said, perhaps with some justification:

'A kiss, some feathers and they call it art.'

The string quartet was buried in a drawer in disgrace and thirty years passed by. In February 2007 I was in Scotland for a wonderful concert given by the Edinburgh String Quartet who proposed a quartet commission:

'Have you ever written one?'

'I've written works which use string quartet - to accompany a singer for instance in Shakespeare Songs or a flute in the Flute Quintet- but not a serious string quartet on its own.'

'We heard you had written one.'

'Well I did once write a ballet for string quartet.'

'Could we see it?'

When I got home I took 'Leda and the Swan' out of its drawer and started printing it up on computer. At first I scrapped large chunks of it. It embarrassed me, but the more I listened to it the more I realised that a lot of it did work, even the intentionally under-powered section meant for the poetry-reading, which in some way created breathing space. It had some purple passages in it but then that's what it was supposed to have had! I took great trouble to try and perfect it.

David Puttnam came to the premiere of 'The Court of Love' and was bowled over:

'Let's make a ballet film.'

'OK.'

We talked about subjects and somewhere along the line I mentioned the Max Ophuls film 'Lola Montes', the story of an extraordinary Irish 19th-century adventuress who had posed as a Spanish dancer and seduced her way through all the celebrated men of Europe, finally causing the downfall of King Ludwig I of Bavaria and ending up as a circus high-dive act in Barnum's Circus in New York. We thought it would be the ultimate ballet part for Lynn who was at her peak. Rudolf Nureyev was curently her partner in 'Romeo and Juliet' and he was interested. Jacob Rothschild was alo interested. He very kindly provided us with some research material and was interested in financing it. A Wednesday morning meeting was set for all parties involved to meet at David's office in Kensington, but the evening before he inexplicably panicked and cancelled it.

The moment was lost forever.

Film director Michael Apted had been impressed by the score of 'The Duellists' and asked me to score a BBC film of a play by Stephen Poliakoff. 'Stronger than the Sun' featured Francesca Annis and Tom Bell, a tragic and powerful story of a woman working in a nuclear plant, Sellafield, who commits suicide by swallowing plutonium as a protest against global nuclear proliferation. It is like music for a 'crucifixion' and writing it opened up a deeper vein in my music than hitherto. I played the score through to Michael and Margaret Matheson the producer who was impressed with it and went out on a limb to let me have the line-up I required, landing herself in major trouble for overspending. We recorded the score on 20 September at Lime Grove with a string section from the RPO plus percussion, harp and piano. It worked wonderfully.

After the screening Robert North approached me about using the music for a ballet: 'The Annunciation' first performed by LCDT in Jerusalem in August 1979

Whilst writing it I realised that, having escaped from one rat-race in the Sixties I had now entered a different one in the Seventies. Despite 'giving up' films and the media I was back up to my neck in them. The new impetus and strength that my 'sabbatical' had given to my music was being recognised by creatives and once again being fully 'utilised by society.' How long could I keep writing at this speed, and how should I deal with it? Shadows crossed my mind again whilst composing 'Stronger than the Sun' and I had a sense of foreboding. I felt that the bubble of success would suddenly burst again. The deeper threads in my musical language were soon to re-appear in the oratorio 'Benedictus', and again many years later in 'The Passion of Mary'.

My Irish accountant,from 1966 to 1999, Erskine Frank Dunphy, was named after the novelist, adventurer and Irish patriot, Erskine Childers, who wrote a famous novel about Kaiser Wilhelm's dastardly plan to invade England on its undefended East coast by using flat-bottomed barges containing the Prussian army. This unlikely story was believed in about 1909 by the youngish Lord of the Admiralty, one Winston Churchill, who 'asked questions in the Commons' and caused funds to be made available to construct coastal defences. A film had been made of it by director Tony Maylam for Rank who approached me about an orchestral score. It was thought that Prince Charles had a hand in it. Certainly it was a very English and patriotic affair. 'The Riddle of the Sands' starred Michael York as an upper-class Foreign Office blimp, Simon McCorkindale as a trusty thoroughly-decent chap much given to yachting in small boats, Alan Badel as a dodgy Englishman who has ratted and become a German spy, Francesca Annis as his wholly innocent daughter who assumes a delicious pseudo-German accent and is the understated love interest. I was given much longer than usual to compose a score. Almost the whole summer. I consciously gave it a German musical orientation with little glimpses of Mahler, Brahms and Wagner -in fact rather cheekily quoting his 'Tarnhelm' motif as the theme for the gunboat-masquerading-as-a-paddle-steamer. The main theme was possibly more like Mendelssohn and I scored the long opening credit sequence for female choir and symphony orchestra - unusual and I hoped original scoring for a film. I enlisted two of my friends to help me. Chris Geer had read German Lit. at Oxford and provided a splendidly appropriate lyric praising the dawn, the sea and the Vaterland. David Shaw who was temporarily available after having been a voice-coach at Covent Garden, Ulm and Bayreuth asked if he could supervise the John Alldis Choir. He seemed quite appropriate.

'All right, I'll get you the job, but don't whatever you do make remarks about the music in front of the director.'

'Why not?'

'Well because this is a film and you're not used to that milieu. With newly-written music, directors get very jumpy and nervous. Just conduct and leave all the rest to me.'

'I understand.'

We recorded at CTS on 18th September 18-20. The opening with the female choir sounded fabulous and Tony loved it. David came up to the box.

'It's pretty funny German isn't it?'

'What do you mean?'

Tony twitched a little.

'Well it's not Goethe is it?'

Tony twitched a little more.

I tried to to mouth 'shut up' but it was too late.

'I had it specially written.'

'Oh I don't think I can risk that. Make it into an instrumental.'

The choir was junked and my score was spoilt. A pity.

On the other hand I feel that I am extraordinarily lucky to be so busy in so many fields. I feel that I should 'do something to repay society a little'. Since the only world I really know is music and the media I become interested in musical politics. A lawyer called Trevor Lyttelton has been making waves within the PRS to which I belong. I go and talk to him. It is suggested by him and various other people that I stand as a director. I get a large number of votes and join the council. I get to know Michael Freegard, Vivian Ellis, Alan Frank, Sir Lennox Berkeley, Dick James, Cyril Simon, Jo Horovitz and many others. Also I am 'cultivated' by Donald Mitchell from Faber Music. I take PRS seriously and devote time to it for the next 9 years, also founding the Association of Professional Composers and lobbying for all 3 composers' organizations. (APC, CG, BASCA).

Michael Apted asks if I will MD and score his new feature 'Agatha', also with David Puttnam. Michael and I go to Harrogate to research the subject and the period - 1923. I am invited to lunch at Harewood House by the Earl of Harewood.

I was deluged in a flood of films, and concert music was taking a back seat. David invited me to be musical director and composer on Agatha and also appear as a pianist playing palm court music with the wonderful Reginald Kilbey, who can instantly create perfect cello lines by ear. I compose and record a large-scale score for 'Agatha' 'in the manner of Max Steiner'. But suddenly David Puttnam walks away from it and a new producer has different views. It has major stars, Dustin Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave, and top cameraman Vittorio Storaro, but there are 3 competing scriptwriters and the film is now notorious for the chaos surrounding it. Michael loves the score but dubs it perhaps too loudly. A questionnaire at a BAFTA viewing reveals that the audience loves the music but doesn't much like the film. This does not please Jarvis Astaire, the incoming producer and he decides to scrap the score entirely. I am mortified. If the score had remained I think that I would have moved into the forefront of feature film composing. This is clearly a blow and my career develops differently.

Director Peter Medak invited me to score 'The Odd Job' a small-scale black comedy with Monty Python's Graham Chapman and David Jason and I wrote both words and music for its wry title-song: 'Too late love.'

Whilst waiting to start on the score of Agatha I bumped into Peter Collinson down at Shepperton Studios and he asked me if I could possibly write a score for Claude Chabrol's 'Blood Relatives' with Donald Sutherland and Stephane Audran. Michael Klinger had apparently acquired the English-spoken version for world-wide distribution and felt that the existing score recorded in France was not suitable. I was not sure of the ethics of this or whether the great Chabrol approved but I took it on and managed to complete it in three weeks, recording it with John Richards at CTS on April 28th, a score for dark low woodwind, harp, percussion and strings.

I straightaway embark on a 13-part BBC children's TV series, The Moon Stallion.

I was too busy and was finding it difficult, if not impossible, to organise life between the film world and the classical world. Practicalities caused a change. The lease on the mews house ran out and I moved back to the mill.

The commission of a full-scale dramatic oratorio on Saint Benedict had suddenly become a reality. Janet Canetty-Clarke had persuaded her committee to support the creation of a substantial new work to be premiered at Worth Abbey the following year. The fee offerred was virtually for expenses only: £500 to include the score, parts and rights, a tiny amount for the huge mount of work involved, the suggested going rate for such a commission even at that time being more like £20,000. But I was thrilled by the idea of creating such a work and totally committed to the idea of doing it. I remembered the Abbott's invitation and asked if I could come and stay in the Abbey for a few days. Perhaps I could regain my 'state of grace' and maybe I would be inspired with an idea.

The Abbey was situated in magnificent parkland near the village of Worth, 2 or 3 miles North of Cuckfield. It had once been the stately home of the first Lord Cowdray but had been converted for monastic use, with an impressive modern abbey church in-the-round, capable of seating about 1700 people, with an awe-inspiring echo. The Benedictine monks who made up the order taught in the school which adjoined it.

I was given a cell near to the church and instructed on how to behave. No speaking during meals; attendance of services in the church; work; prayer; meditation.

The monks knew why I had come to stay and one of them showed me to the library:

'You can find any number of books on St. Benedict here.'

'Is there a book that expresses his beliefs?'

'The Rule of Saint Benedict', our guide to living in the community.'

He found a copy for me and I sat and read it. It was not so very long and not at all forbidding. It contained all the most wonderful sayings of Jesus and many quotations from the Psalms, which I learnt were used in the services to echo the days and festivals of the year. It was a text-book of how to approach nearer to a spiritually-motivated daily life and I found it inspiring. It was neither Catholic nor Protestant and I learnt that there are Benedictine monasteries within both persuasions. I would write a work describing an ordinary person walking into a monastery, hearing the voice of St. Benedict reading from his rule, conducting dialogues with the monks and with himself, expressing his inner doubts and fears and gradually becoming so strongly affected that ultimately he signs to enter the order as a Novice.

I discussed this idea with Victor Farwell:

'It's not exactly the life-story of Benedict is it?'

'No, not all, but I gather that one of your students is already writing a musical about his life. I would like to do something quite different. What do you think?'

'I think it's a splendid idea.'

'Would you check that the text is acceptable?'

'I would be delighted.'

I began by setting the Prologue in the style of plain-chant, sung by tenors and basses like monks: 'Ausculta o fili'. The sopranos and alto join in and it rises to a mighty climax. The 'everyman' figure (the solo tenor) walks into the church and sings out an impassioned aria expressing his despair, as the Benedictines would do it, by couching their troubles in the words of a psalm:

'Thy rebuke Lord not thy vengeance, thy chastisement not thy condemnation. Thy arrows pierce me, thy hand presses me hard, thy anger has driven away all health from my body, my bones have no rest..'

Sopranos and altos sing like angels expressing the comforting words of God:

'Thou Lord wilt listen to me..be my refuge, my defence..'

and this idea is taken up in a chorus of exhortation; 'I have piped unto you and you have not danced..'

'He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.'

'Everyman' listens, but questions:

'Lord who shall dwell in thy house, who shall rest upon thy holy hill?'

The chorus reply and this dialogue continues throughout Part One until he expresses a heartfelt desire to approach nearer to the divine:

'My soul has a desire and longing to enter into the house of the Lord...'

I began part two of the work with a warning from the Saint:

'Test the spirits to see whether they come from God.'

My inspiration came to a stand-still. How would 'everyman' react next? Come to that how would I react? I would question my motives at the very deepest level. I had been doing much of this, reading Jung and Fromm and Freud etc, etc. The tenor had expressed his longing 'to enter into the house of the lord, but he should express his despair at being locked into the 'labyrinth of his own mind.'

Where did that line come from? Had I made it up? I couldn't place it. For days I researched texts. I wanted a huge solo for Richard, as I had promised him. Nothing worked. My mind went back to the fifth form and Randall the English-master, so mad about Gerard Manley-Hopkins. It wasn't him but it was not far off. I got it. Francis Thompson, 'The Hound of Heaven'. It was in an anthology right in my own room!

The poem said exactly what I wished to express:

'I fled Him down the night and down the days, I fled Him down the labyrynthine ways of my own mind...'

Gradually he goes from the very depths of despair:

'My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap. My days have crackl'd and gone up in smoke...'

to the most glorious vision and affirmation of the Almghty:

'His name I know, and what his trumpet saith. That voice is round me like a bursting sea:'

At this point full choirs and orchestra fff burst into what Browning might have meant by the 'great C-major of life:

'Rise, clasp my hand and come!'

When I first heard it it sounded like the monumental wave that had once submerged me off the beach in Cornwall.

The third part of the work is a setting of the service of admission to the Benedictine Order Psalm 139 'O Lord thou hast searched me out and known me.' and ends with Psalm 103: 'Bless the Lord O my soul', when the novice must repeat the phrase 'Pray for me' three times.

I added a passage from the Epilogue of the Rule:'...then must we -while there is time, while we are in this body and can fulful all these things by the light of this life - hasten to do now what may profit us for eternity...'

and a mighty eight-fold 'Amen' recapitulated the music of 'He that hath ears to hear' and ended the work.

Or did it? The work still didn't feel complete. It needed some sort of overture, possibly a short Interlude and an Epilogue. But I couldn't imagine an overture for full orchestra. The work was about one person, a solitary monk. Shouldn't it be for a solo instrument? I needed time to think and set about the orchestration later. The premiere was a year away in May 1980.

The phone rang. A cheery American called Norman Gimbel. He had been much impressed by my score for 'The Duellists'. Would I consider coming to Hollywood to score a biggish feature film?

What's the subject?'

'The Titanic'. I'm staying in The Churchill Hotel. Would you come up to London and talk about it?'

I thought about it. What timing! Just as I needed to 'get away for a break'. Not most people's idea of a break, but the £500 for the oratorio wasn't going to keep the bills paid and a Hollywood film it would certainly help fill the coffers. I could start to orchestrate when I got back. It should only take about a month. I flew to Los Angeles on July 21st.

It was what they called a mini-series. Almost the length of two films and intended both for TV and cinema. There was a big and quite starry cast: David Janssen, Ian Holm, Helen Mirren, David Warner, Ian Holm, Cloris Leachman and Helen Mirren. The director was Billy Hale. It was called 'SOS Titanic' and was a pretty accurate account of the disaster and well researched. We had a man who was an actual survivor on the team who I spoke to quite a bit. Producer Norman Gimbel was a practical joker and when I arrived he had an issue of Variety printed with the headline 'Howard Blake dies at age 95'. He didn't seem too concerned as to whether the film succeeded or not. I later found he was known as a lyric writer but he never mentioned it. He hired me on the strength of 'The Duellists' which I'd just written and because he was obliged to have a certain proportion of Brits on the team because it was an Anglo-USA production. It was made by Bernard Delfont, brother of Lew Grade who was making 'The Raising of the Titanic' on the next lot. I liked the authentic Black and White montage of the launching and that inspired my theme for the opening. Originally I wanted to write the score for large organ, suggesting the one in the Mormon Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, but Gimbel said no. I used horns and trombones with percussion, flute, oboe and a few strings and recorded in Denham Studios in London, flying back from LA for 5 days. The set of Titanic was a huge affair that could be moved up and down electrically. All other ship interiors were shot on the Queen Mary in Long Beach. The 1st class lounge was the dining room of the Waldorf in Aldwych. I used a Scott Joplin waltz (his only one, called 'Bethena') for the Irish lovers dancing on deck and wrote several more waltzes myself. The dance music played below decks when the lovers first meet was 'The Connemara Waltz.'

I was given every possible comfort to help me write. A large apartment in the Sportsman's Lodge, a separate studio down the road in Studio City in which to work, a car, my own music editor and my own music co-ordinator. The weather was fabulous and I had a generous per diem. What more could I wish for. Nothing - but the extraordinarily sudden change of life-style from monastery in Sussex to the fles-pots of Tinseltown took a bit of adjusting to!

In September I went back to my life at the mill and did one or two smaller commissions: a BBC Play of the month,'Gentlefolk' for director Rodney Bennett for whom I wrote a chamber music score for the Gabrieli string quartet and Thea King as the marvellous clarinet player; and a children's series for BBC called 'Our John Willie.'

But I couldn't wait to start the scoring of my magnum opus.

I settled down to orchestrate my beloved 'Benedictus' and prepare for the first performance on 10th May at Worth Abbey.

I still hadn't decided on a plane for the overeture but I spoke one day to Ken Essex who was the one member of my piano quartet for whom I had not written a solo piece, although he'd repeatedly asked me.

'What do you thnk about an overture for solo viola?'

'Just for solo viola would be fine Howard.'

I wrote 'Prelude for solo viola.' and sent it to him.

Curiously although he studied it and learnt to play it wonderfully, he was too nervous to play it in public and the soloist at the first performance was Frederick Riddle, who didn't bat an eyelid.

I attended some choir rehearsals conducted by Janet Canetty-Clarke who was to conduct. I thought it might have been more practical for me to conduct myself, since I was still finishing it and notes and dynamics and phrasing were constantly being revised, but I knew how passionately she wanted to do it and thought she'd manage. The great Welsh tenor Richard Lewis had agreed to sing the tenor role, which he'd discussed with me at considerable length and Sidney Sax had amazingly agreed to bring his National Philharmonic Orchestra down with Frederick Riddle to play the taxing solo viola part. Producer Jim Parr of BBC Radio Brighton had agreed to broadcast it.

Out of the blue I got a call from the music-film producer Tony Palmer, famous for his filmed documentaries of Shostakovich, Britten, Menuhin, Walton, Malcolm Arnold and many other great composers. He wanted to film the first performance for television. He came over to see me at the mill on the 8th May and we went on up to hear a rehearsal in the Abbey. After the rehearsal he confronted me:

'You have to conduct it yourself.'

'Why?'

'You know why.'

Richard Lewis said the same. He explained that Janet could not conduct up to speed and because of this he would run out of breath in the demanding passages and his voice would almost certainly crack. Word somehow got through to Sid who phoned and said he would not be bringing the orchestra down unless I conducted.

I found myself in a very awkward position. I took Janet aside and very tactfully and quietly explained it:

'You must talk to the committee.'

She left without another word and next day I found myself in a 'when did you last see your father' situation, hauled before the grim-faced committee of the Ditchling Choral Society. It included a JP, a doctor, a bank clerk (I think) who was the chairman and Peter Canetty-Clarke, Janet's husband, who may not have actually been a committee member. I explained that it would be marvellous for the work and the choir if Tony Palmer filmed it. It would make the work that they had commissioned instantly famous and Janet and the choir famous along with it.

'The Ditchling Choral Society already is world-famous and Janet is its conductor. We, the Ditchling Choral Society, commissioned you to write a work. You have written it and delivered it on time, you have been handsomely paid the sum of £500 and we require no further involvement from you. If the tenor or the orchestra do not fulfil their contractual commitments we shall take legal action against them and sue for damages. You will not be welcome at the concert tomorrow.'

The chairman added that he thought I'd just written it for the money and explaining to him that the current going-rate according to the profession should have been in excess of £20,000 didn't cut much ice.

The JP chipped in;

'It's obvious that you just want a chance to make a name for yourself as a conductor. In any case we the DCS own the work.'

'No, I'm afraid you don't. The copyright belongs to the composer.'

I went next door and asked Helen Watts what I should do.

'Get drunk!'

Many friends came down to the mill next day, including fellow-composers Carl Davis and Stanley Myers. They escorted me to the sold-out concert, with an amazing audience for a new, contemporary, concert-length work - 1,700 people, out in the middle of the countryside. The 'bank clerk' was on the door and refused me admission although I had a ticket. My hefty friend Christopher Geer, who was about to speak the part of Saint Benedict, gently stroked the chairman's tie and asked very quietly and most courteously:

'Would you like to have your tie shoved down your throat?'

'Come on chaps, this is a religious work.'

We passed through the door. At the end I was not asked to take a bow, but got up eventually and walked on to the stage to deafening applause. Afterwards I put the score away in a drawer in disgust. I had sacrificed a great deal to compose this work, not least a long-term contract with Universal in Hollywood. I felt very badly treated and the effect of ostracization brought about the end of my idyllic life in Sussex, although it was another 18 months before I could bring myself to sell my much-loved mill and leave Mid-Sussex for good. Somehow the furore was blamed on me. Villagers did not like the publicity I was receiving. The papers were full of this 'local Sussex star'. In the week of 'Benedictus' The Mid-Sussex Times had printed a full-page picture of me captioned:

'Our gift from God'.

This did not help! From my point of view I felt I had at last written a real work despite all obstacles and it had been smashed. The first performance was a disaster and the fabulous offer of a filmed television premiere was lost for ever.

On a quiet Thursday afternoon in June my friend John Richards the sound engineer at CTS Wembley rang me:

'What are you up to?'

'Not much.'

'Could you come and look at a film?'

It is 'Flash Gordon', which is costing Dino be Laurentiis £50 million. The RPO has been booked for 2 weeks and they have no score. The group 'Queen' (Brian May and Freddie Mercury etc) has created a pop song 'Flash!' and 1 or 2 guitar riffs, but the composer/arranger suggested by Queen has only managed to create '1 minute of score' (sic) and they are desperate. Barney Colan head of music in Universal Hollywood has come over, and Dino de Laurentiis is there.

'Can you write a new score by Monday?'

'Nobody on earth could- not even Mozart, Beethoven and Bach put together could. It will take at least a week to assess it and measure it.'

Queen also want their bits 'sewn into the orchestral score', which makes it worse. Dino appoints me:

'You are now the Musical Director. What we do with the RPO?'

'We pay them off.'

It will take at least 4 or 5 weeks, but a deal is done. I am talked into it and I start. The music editor is not cooperative. He doesn't want to re-measure the film, he wants a holiday. The amount of time I have gets whittled down. I move to London, I don't eat, I live on coffee and biscuits. I write a 500-page score fully orchestrated in 10 days. For the last four days I don't sleep. A team of copyists copy it. I feel fine. I am high as a kite. I go to Denham and conduct for 3 days. It works brilliantly and everybody's pleased. Queen are 'amazed'. I go back to the house and go to sleep. Three days later I am still there, since I have never woken up. A doctor is called, who can't wake me. He shoots me full of drugs to wake me. I have 'chronic bronchitis brought on by total exhaustion'. I would 'probably never have woken up', he says. Nobody thanks me or rings me. I am not welcome at the mixing because they substitute most of my music with synthesizer equivalents. But I gradually recover.

Dubbing sessions began and I later discovered that much of my score had been replaced with synthesized music, myself having demonstrated how to handle it. They had a very good lawyer called Jim Beech who knew all the angles and I was no much for him at all. Everything to do with Flash Gordon was disappointing.

However, my relations with the members of 'Queen' were always cordial. Brian May came over one day and hummed an idea for an 'overture'. As he did so I jotted it down on some manuscript paper and then played it back on the piano, which really startled him.

'How did you do that?'

They all came along to the orchestral recordings and seemed fascinated. I remember Freddie Mercury singing the idea of 'Ride to Arboria' in his high falsetto and I showed him how I could expand it into the orchestral section now on the film, with which he seemed very pleased. Whilst scoring I had cassettes of guitar ideas from Brian, in particular the slow 'falling-chord' sequence. I wrote this out into my score at one point and surrounded it with big orchestral colour. When I came to the recording I had Brian's solo guitar on headphones and conducted the orchestra in synch. around it. Many months later Brian came round to Worple Way over to play me listened to the finished album. His own stereo-system was out of action. Unfortunately so was mine and we lay on the floor and listened on Christopher's Mickey Mouse cassette player. So much for a budget of £50,000,000.

John rang me again:

'You're nominated with Queen for a joint British Academy Award for Best Score.

'Shall we take our wives and go to the dinner?'

Both of us were in trouble. I with Trisha, John with Juliet:

'Is that a good idea?'

'It'll be fun.'

David Frost announced the prizes:

'The nomination for Best Film Score goes to 'Queen'.

'I thought you said...?'

'It says it in the programme...'

'He hasn't read it out...'

Everything to do with Flash Gordon was disappointing.

'You've just been in Hollywood?'

'Yes'

'What's it like?'

'You've never been there?'

'Never.'

'Oh, you should go and have a look at all the sound studios. I can give you all the names and numbers. You would love it John!'

He did. He went the following week and never came back.

In the second half of the year there was an actors and musicians strike in Hollywood. All of the work came to Europe and London, where the MU had no agreement with the American Federation. I was overwhelmed by conducting work for The National Philharmonic at Abbey Road. There were recording sessions pencilled in every hour for 6 months. I conducted 'Terror Train,'Sophia Loren', 'Popeye' for Robert Altmann, SOB for Blake Edwards and Henry Mancini, The Silence of the North, Happy Birthday to me', Love Max','Every which way but loose' for Clint Eastwood and Elmer Bernstein , episodes of Hart to Hart and Love Boat for Aaron Spelling and others that I can't remember. Then suddenly the M. U. put a block on all the work. I got enmeshed in union discussions and when there was a mass protest meeting of 600 session musicians I was asked to address it. A petition was signed by all but it 'got lost' on its way to the MU. The colossal working spree stopped as suddenly as it started.

In January 1981 Henry Mancini rang me from California and asked if I would act as MD and do 'a bit of orchestration' on the film 'Victor/Victoria'. I went down to Pinewood and watched rehearsals with Julie Andrews, Robert Preston, and the Paddy Stone Dancers. The big production number in the show was 'Le Jazz Hot'. I was not happy with the piano routine for it and suggested a thirties big band treatment a la Paul Whiteman. Blake Edwards loved the idea. I scored it for big swing band plus strings and chorus and the adaptation later won Hank an Oscar.

On a quiet Thursday afternoon my friend John Richards the sound engineer at CTS Wembley rang me:

'What are you up to?'

'Not much.'

'Could you come and look at a film?'

It is 'Flash Gordon', which is costing Dino be Laurentiis £50 million. The RPO has been booked for 2 weeks and they have no score. The group 'Queen' (Brian May and Freddie Mercury etc) has created a pop song 'Flash!' and 1 or 2 guitar riffs, but the composer/arranger suggested by Queen has only managed to create '1 minute of score' (sic) and they are desperate. Barney Colan head of music in Universal Hollywood has come over, and Dino de Laurentiis is there.

'Can you write a new score by Monday?'

'Nobody on earth could- not even Mozart, Beethoven and Bach put together could. It will take at least a week to assess it and measure it.'

Queen also want their bits 'sewn into the orchestral score', which makes it worse. Dino appoints me:

'You are now the Musical Director. What we do with the RPO?'

'We pay them off.'

It would take at least 4 or 5 weeks, but a deal is done. I was talked into it and I started. The music editor is not cooperative. He doesn't want to re-measure the film, he wants a holiday. The amount of time I have gets whittled down. I move to London, I don't eat, I live on coffee and biscuits. I write a 500-page score fully orchestrated in 10 days. For the last four days I don't sleep. A team of copyists copy it. I feel fine. I am high as a kite. I go to Denham and conduct for 3 days. It works brilliantly and everybody's pleased. Queen are 'amazed'. I go back to the house and go to sleep. Three days later I am still there, since I have never woken up. A doctor is called, who can't wake me. He shoots me full of drugs to wake me. I have 'chronic bronchitis brought on by total exhaustion'. I would 'probably never have woken up', he says. Nobody thanks me or rings me. I am not welcome at the mixing because they substitute most of my music with synthesizer equivalents. But I gradually recover.

Dubbing sessions began and I later discovered that much of my score had been replaced with synthesized music, myself having demonstrated how to handle it. They had a very good lawyer called Jim Beech who knew all the angles and I was no much for him at all. Everything to do with Flash Gordon was disappointing.

However, my relations with the members of 'Queen' were always cordial. Brian May came over one day and hummed an idea for an 'overture'. As he did so I jotted it down on some manuscript paper and then played it back on the piano, which really startled him.

'How did you do that?'

They all came along to the orchestral recordings and seemed fascinated. I remember Freddie Mercury singing the idea of 'Ride to Arboria' in his high falsetto and I showed him how I could expand it into the orchestral section now on the film, with which he seemed very pleased. Whilst scoring I had cassettes of guitar ideas from Brian, in particular the slow 'falling-chord' sequence. I wrote this out into my score at one point and surrounded it with big orchestral colour. When I came to the recording I had Brian's solo guitar on headphones and conducted the orchestra in synch. around it. Many months later Brian came round to Worple Way over to play me listened to the finished album. His own stereo-system was out of action. Unfortunately so was mine and we lay on the floor and listened on Christopher's Mickey Mouse cassette player. So much for a budget of £50,000,000.

John rang me again:

'You're nominated with Queen for a joint British Academy Award for Best Score.

'Shall we take our wives and go to the dinner?'

Both of us were in trouble. I with Trisha, John with Juliet:

'Is that a good idea?'

'It'll be fun.'

David Frost announced the prizes:

'The nomination for Best Film Score goes to 'Queen'.

'I thought you said...?'

'It says it in the programme...'

'He hasn't read it out...'

Everything to do with Flash Gordon was disappointing.

'You've just been in Hollywood?'

'Yes'

'What's it like?'

'You've never been there?'

'Never.'

'Oh, you should go and have a look at all the sound studios. I can give you all the names and numbers. You would love it John!'

He did. He went the following week and never came back.

In January 1981 Henry Mancini rang me from California and asked if I would act as MD and do 'a bit of orchestration' on the film 'Victor/Victoria'. I went down to Pinewood and watched rehearsals with Julie Andrews, Robert Preston, and the Paddy Stone Dancers. The big production number in the show was 'Le Jazz Hot'. I was not happy with the piano routine for it and suggested a thirties big band treatment a la Paul Whiteman. Blake Edwards loved the idea. I scored it for big swing band plus strings and chorus and the adaptation later won Hank an Oscar.

I was made an executive director of the PRS and was instrumental in causing the MU session section to be democratically elected. I was also energetic on behalf of the APC.

In February, BBC producer Jim Parr at Radio Brighton asked if I would accept a commission to write a work for The Philip Jones Brass Ensemble. I accepted and wrote 'Sinfonietta for Brass'. I loved writing it and it was enthusiastically premiered in the Brighton Festival.

I was commissioned to write 'Elegy' for Christopher Gradwell's London Saxaphone Quartet a short work in one movment which was premiered at a Marble Hill English Trust concert.

In the summer Gerry Potterton invited me to a premiere of an animation feature he had directed called 'Heavy Metal'. It took place in the the Guggenheim Museum in New York with bands such as 'Blue Oyster Cult' providing the cocktail music. Afterwards we drove up to the Southern Townships in Quebec where Gerry had a beautiful old settler farmhouse. We discussed the idea of starting a film company in Montreal. We went to the Bank of Canada and asked if they would back us and were offerred an advance of $3m dollars if we could produce a list of feasible projects. I went back to New York with France for the premiere of 'My Dinner with Andre' and we met Louis Malle. I was having a wonderful time. I decided that I would move to Montreal and make films. Start a new life. I returned to Sussex to put the mill on the market and sort things out.

Gerry followed me over to London and we met for lunch in Charlotte Street. He asked if I'd mind first dropping in on the animation film company TVC to pick up a cheque, and introduced me to the company director John Coates:

'You're a film composer aren't you?'

'Yes.'

'I've just made a 9-minute demo for a children's film called 'The Snowman'. I asked Ron Goodwin to compose a score for it, but I don't think it's quite right. Would it be unethical of me to ask you to look at it?'

'In this particular instance no.'

I was remembering the disaster of The Happy Prince

We went into the viewing room. The minute I saw it I realised that my innocent tune from Cornwall which I had so much wanted to use in 'The Happy Prince' under the working title 'Flying through the Air' would in fact work miraculously on this film of The Snowman. In fact I realised that the whole film would work wonderfully with nothing but music - THE MUSIC WOULD BE THE SCRIPT. It is what I had always wanted to do. Combine image and music. At last I had found a subject where this would work brilliantly.

Synchronicity.

'I'll do it providing the film has no dialogue, just music.'

John was dubious.

'I think it has to have dialogue. All films have dialogue.'

'Let me do a piano demo for you and I'll show you what I mean.'

'All right.'

On 31st September at Advision I recorded a piano track against the filmed pencil drawings. It worked. John took it into the new TV Channel 4 the following day to get a sounding from Jeremy Isaacs:

'It's a brilliant idea. We should do it.'

It didn't mean we could start immediately but it did mean that if Jeremy could get the finance together it would be likely to happen. Meanwhile the mill sold for the asking price and I packed up all of my belongings in a crate to go to Canada - including all my manuscripts and the grand piano! There was a roomful of orchestral parts but I loaded these onto a wheelbarrow and burnt them on a bonfire, twenty-nine barrowfuls.

Just before leaving I was offerred a TV score to write for the BBC: 'Mrs Reinhardt' with Helen Mirren and director Piers Haggard. I took the work back to Montreal with me and composed it in France's apartment. I would go back to London again to record.

Cooperation on our new film company however was not progressing. Gerry and I couldn't agree on one single idea for a feature. The company got as far as the notepaper design and stuck there. Things started to look less rosy.

I went back to the Mill to hand over the keys to the buyer at 12am on a Thursday. At 11am Liz phoned.

'Would you like a job as musical director at MGM in London on a feature film for Tony Scott, Ridley's brother? It stars David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve and it's called 'The Hunger'. Tony wants to use existing classical music for the soundtrack.'

My whole life swam in front of my eyes. After 6 months very little had actually happened in Montreal; the film company was looking like a pipe-dream. I took the job, handed over the keys, drove to London and started work the following Monday. I checked into the Tara hotel in Kensington and scoured the Sunday Times.

'Two turn-of-the-century Edwardian artists studios converted into a working apartment close to Kensington Gardens.'

I bought it the next day, moved in and loved it. I rang the crate company and there had been a mistake. They forgot to unload it at Montreal.

'Where is it?'

'I'm afraid it's gone on to Toronto docks.'

'Excellent! Could you send it back to London.'

'I beg your pardon sir?'

It all turned up safe and sound. I was back in business in London and seemed to be very happy about it. Surprisingly, Gerry sounded relieved.

I decided 'to make the best of it'. The disaster of my 'Benedictus' premiere meant that my classical career as a composer had been set back. Nothing of mine was published other than by my own company, Highbridge Music. I decided I was not meant for a classical career. I'd also failed to become a film producer for the second time. I would have to go back to film scoring - where I belonged!

This change of my attitude had some curious side-effects. For instance, I had composed 'Lullaby for 5 a cappella voices' for The Scholars. It had contained the melody 'Sleep my little child' and was so well-received at its premiere in St. John's Smith Square on December 21st 1975 that I rescored as 'Lullaby for soloists and orchestra' and presented it gratis to The Ditchling Choral Society for their Christmas concert at Hurstpierpoint College Chapel on 18th December 1976. Nobody seemed very interested however. As I left the chapel one of the choir called out, laughing sarcastically:

Seven years later with my new lyric 'Walking in the Air' it became the theme-song of 'The Snowman' animated film and was a hit.

'The Hunger' was a stylish contemporary rethink of Dracula. Tony wanted unusual and interesting music. It was fun. I started to go to his house in Wimbledon at 8. 00 in the morning with loads of records to play to him. We chose music and I rerecorded it with the finest musicians: Howard Shelley, Ralph Holmes and Rafael Wallfisch: The Schubert Trio in E flat , the Bach Partita in E for solo violin; the Bach cello suite in G, Ravel's 'Le Gibet'. I listen to Maurice Gendron's cello recordings of the Bach Suites as a reference, which I decide are the best. Tony wanted music for an erotic scene between Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon in a set like an Egyptian temple. I recorded the soprano duet from Delibes' 'Lakme' with early music sopranos without vibrato, Elaine Barry and Judith Pearce. A year later I adapted this and recorded it again for Tony as the track for the British Airways commercial and Lakme becomes perhaps the most succesful ad music of all time and one of the most popular operatic hits of all time. I also discovered a punk rock group from Luton called 'Bauhaus' and recorded 'Bella Lugosi's Dead' for the film. It was very noisy but the single went into the top 10. I appeared in the film as a pianist wearing a white DJ and sunglasses, playing 'Dolphin Square Blues'.

On 25th March, in the midst of 'The Hunger' John Coates rang me to say that the money had come through from Channel 4 and we were starting work on 'The Snowman' immediately. We met for a bottle of champagne.

Recently in a filmed interview with Tokyo TV I mentioned this and March 25th is now National Snowman Day in Japan!

I saw the 26-minute completed pencil storyboard on April 6th and composed the piano score, recording it myself on May 6th, again at Advision. There was no vocal at this point but the animators started work. The inspirational director was Diane Jackson who I just loved.

One evening music publishers Terry and Mandy Oates come to see me at the studio. They would have much liked to take over my publishing but were not interested in my serious stuff. I played them the new track of The Snowman with the semi-complete video and Terry said:

'You ought to write some words and make that tune into a song.'

I listened to this because Terry once suggested to Henry Mancini that there should be a lyric on 'Breakfast at Tiffany's.' There was and it was 'Moon River' and Terry published it. Next day I set off for the park with a picnic. The old working title of 'Flying through the air' wasn't very clever, but as I walked across the road the words 'Walking in the air' crossed my mind. Better. I rented a deck-chair and spent most of the day in it. The rest of the lyric followed:

We're walking in the air We're floating in the moonlit sky The people far below Are sleeping as we fly

I'm holding very tight I'm riding in the midnight blue I'm finding I can fly So high above with you

On across the world The villages go by like dreams The rivers and the hills The forests and the streams

Children gaze open-mouthed taken by surprise Nobody down below believes their eyes

We're surfing in the air We're swimming in the frozen sky We're drifting over Icy mountains floating by

Suddenly swooping low on an ocean deep Rousing up a mighty monster from his sleep

We're walking in the air We're dancing in the midnight sky And everyone who sees us Greets us as we fly

I finished the orchestration of The Snowman and recorded the complete track in two 3-hour sessions on 5th July with John Richards at CTS. It was my own hand-picked chamber orchestra with all my friends: Jack Rothstein as leader, Ken Essex lead viola, Peter Willison lead cello. It sounded marvellous, but Sid Sax didn't like my picking my own orchestra and parted company with me, rather as David Katz had done 10 years earlier. Friction developed around The Snowman from the day I recorded it. The Executive Producer, Iain Harvey was an accountant from the book-publishers Hamish Hamilton. My lovely agent Liz Keys had suddenly retired and her place had been taken by Nigel Britten who negotiated the contract. Iain Harvey immediately believed he had been tricked over the royalties even though he had dictated the contract for them! When I recorded the song with a boy from St Paul's Cathedral, Peter Auty, he refused to pay him:

'He's only a boy!'

Barry Rose who had brought him along as director of music at St Paul's was rightly furious. They started to leave the studio and I offered to pay them out of my own pocket, but John Coates stepped in and Harvey grudgingly conceded he would pay the (miserly) equivalent of one musician's fee and no royalties. Peter Auty is now a distinguished solo tenor with Covent Garden Opera. Not surprisingly this shabby treatment of him stacked up bad feeling for the future and has never been resolved. The 26-minute Snowman cartoon was first shown at Christmas 1982, immediately nominated for a Hollywood Oscar and went on to win many prizes and become an all-time classic.

On the whole I felt I'd made the right move returning to London, even if it was via Montreal!

Somewhere in the middle of all this my friendly BBC Brighton producer, Jim Parr, asked if I would write a jazz piece for 'National Arts Day'. I wrote 'Heartbeat', long before a TV show of that name started. It was for the Danny Moss Quintet, tenor sax, piano, bass drums, plus a string orchestra and took place at the Gardner Centre of Sussex University on May 30/31. I enlarged it later into a tenor saxaphone concerto for BBC 2 in 1990 when the soloist was Ian Dixson.

I was offerred to score a 60-minute TV film with Jean Simmons and Ian Carmichael. I composed it for my piano quartet. It was called 'Down at the Hydro' from a series called 'All for Love'.

I was asked to be musical director and composer on an American military film shooting in England called 'The Lords of Discipline' with David Keith. I organised and wrote for an all-American marching band at Kneller Hall, arranged sixties rock for the graduation ball and created a college song with lyrics by Lloyd Fonveille called 'Carolina keep us faithful'. The story was supposed to be set in The Citadel in South Carolina but was shot in England at Wellington college and Kneller hall. I created a complete score and recorded it 10-11 November at CTS. But Jeff Katzenberg at Paramount was unhappy. Director Franc Roddam, myself and the editor were summoned to LA. Paramount paid me to travel first-class on Pan-Am sitting next to Joan Collins and I was booked in to a suite in the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard. We meet Jeff, who told us The White House think the film is:

'sort of anti-american'.

Franc had to reshoot the ending and I was persuaded to stay and write a new 'all-American' score. I conducted this 3-4 January at Evergreen. In fact when we got to the dub at Glen-Glen a lot of my original score went back into the picture, but I wasn't home for Christmas and I missed the release of The Snowman. When I did get back it was causing a stir. Nigel had made contact with Ray Burford at CBS Masterworks, who was considering an album. I asked Nigel if he could make a deal and also try to find a publisher for the song. But Nigel had other ideas and persuaded me to accompany him back to Hollywood to 'promote me with the studio music heads'. I thought this was a pretty silly idea, but agreed to it in order to please Liz and London Management. When we got there they asked me who Nigel wass. They thought I was promoting Nigel, which perhaps I am! It was less than productive.

The CBS deal was not coming to fruition. I rang Ray Burford at CBS who said he hadn't heard anything further from Nigel Britten since January but was very keen to do an album of Snowman. On 22 May I decided that I must part company with Nigel and London Management, after 13 years. I had to work on Snowman myself or nothing would happen. It was too great an opportunity to miss and I made endless phone calls and had many meetings. CBS wanted a spoken commentary. Raymond Briggs preferred not to do it, so I wrote it myself to - fitted exactly like music. I bought out the musicians rights from the film sessions from John Coates, engaged Bernard Cribbins to record my commentary and the album was set for a Christmas release. I seemed to be progressing better without an agent. My long-time accountant, Frank Dunphy, agreed to act as my business manager, and we visited CBS and concluded a deal.

At this moment I was offerred a horror film to score for Dino de Laurentiis. I flew to LA to view it on 24th June , returned to London and recorded it on July 25-27. It was called 'Amityville 3-D' and the director was Richard Fleischer. However in general the flow of film commissions started to decline due to my breaking off with London Management.

I am invited to dinner by Donald Mitchell at the Garrick Club. He is the chairman of Faber Music which I think is very grand and reputable. He says he and his colleague Martin Kingsbury would love to come over and hear The Snowman- 'he has heard so much about it'. I say that I think it's a pop song and he is an avant garde serious publisher, and it wouldn't be for him, but he says 'we are broadening out'. They come over, listen to The Snowman, ask to hear what else I have composed and declare that 'they would like to publish everything I have ever written!'. I am completely overwhelmed by this and think it is the most marvellous moment of my whole life. They will publish Snowman in printed full score and piano score and sheet music and then they will publish everything else and promote it.

Sometime in the summer Peter Willison, my cellist in the piano quartet, suggests we form an orchestra of the Snowman players since now it is an outstanding recording on a CBS Masterworks album. He has been offerred the name 'The Sinfonia of London' and we could use this on the album. We meet up with the owner in an interval at the RAH during a prom. Flute player Eddie Taylor, the partner of conductor Muir Matheson, sells us the name, which seems a good idea. I think it will be wonderful to have my own orchestra to do concerts and record all my classical work on.

With our own prestigiously-named orchstra, Peter Willison and I go to see the impresario, Raymond Gubbay and suggest he does Snowman in concert at The Barbican. Raymond says he never does modern music but decides to take a flutter. It sells out. It causes every other hall and school and orchestra in Britain to do it. By 1985 there are 150 concerts of it in Christmas week in England alone. Four days later I leave for Australia. Michael Leighton Jones is now vocal professor at Queensland University. He is to put on 'Benedictus' in Brisbane and I can revise the work, get it in shape and conduct my own first performance of it with the student chorus and orchestra. He will make it the 'set work' for the term. I am thrilled by this, and take the work out of mothballs. My own work. Through August I have also worked on rescoring and revising it. I go to Australia on September 9 At 'the uni' they perform all sorts of pieces of mine and I conduct 'Benedictus'. I write a jazz a cappella version of 'Waltzing Matilda' for 8 voices and suggest Michael starts a vocal group, which he does, very succesfully (Jones and Co). It is a miniature Howard Blake festival. 'Benedictus' is a terrific success and I believe in it as a work once more. I know that I must try to get it published and recorded and this will be my priority with Faber when I return.

But while I am in Brisbane I have my first experience of being published. Faber send me proofs of a piano/vocal score of Snowman arranged by Marc Anthony Turnage. Why such a composer, and why, when I can do it myself? It is unplayable and I phone Martin Kingsbury and ask if I may rewrite it. I do it sitting in a guest house in the suburbs of Brisbane, warned of strange deadly snakes and spiders! I post it back complete to England within a week and Faber print it by the time I return on November 1st. On November 9th Faber Music and CBS Masterworks hold a joint press launch for Snowman at 3 Queen Square.

Donald Mitchell says to me: 'I look forward to a very profitable 15 years'. Why 15? There is nothing in the contract about 15. I find out at 9. 30am on the morning of my 60th birthday - exactly 15 years later.

I am wildly excited about my wonderfully prestigious publishing agreement. Of course I hope that Snowman will succeed, but for me I hope it is to be the stepping-stone to the fulfillment of all that I've dreamed of.

Suffering from severe jetlag I write and record a beautiful little violin and piano score for a 5-minute Christmas animation film by John Coates called 'Ernest and Celestine' for Channel 4.

Faber are doing a great job on Snowman, printing the full score and piano/vocal score and songsheet with a coloured picture from the film on the cover, later preparing an 'easy piano picture book' and all sorts of simplified arrangements for children and amateurs. They hire a pop promoter Dave Dee to promote 'Walking in the Air' as a pop song , which quite surprises me, but they don't ask me to do the arrangements, which both puzzles and upsets me. I don't complain because I'm desperately keen to please Faber and start publishing my serious work, which gets under way with my 'Sinfonietta for Brass'.

I started work as musical director on 'The Bounty' with a great cast of Anthony Hopkins, Mel Gibson, Laurence Olivier, Edward Fox and Daniel Day-Lewis. But although I set the film up, I didn't get to compose the score. Nigel was not doing too well.

In January I am asked to write a Clarinet Concerto by Thea King, my dear friend whose playing to me excels all other clarinet players I have ever heard. I start work and take it very seriously. It must be the best I can possibly do! When it is completed Thea gives the premiere in a concert at the QEH with the English Chamber Orchestra, recording it the following day. Both are conducted by myself. (30th May 1/2 June 85) She plays exquisitely. Ted Perry at Hyperion is delighted with it and it is released with works by Lutoslawski and Seiber. The CD later wins a prize.

In 1982 the film director Tony Scott had taken me on as musical director for the feature film 'The Hunger', a stylish contemporary rethink of 'Dracula' starring David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. He'd had the interesting idea of constructing most of the score from existing classical music, but it had to be very carefully chosen to fit each scene and I was given the job of finding it. I started to go to his house in Wimbledon with case-loads of recordings to play to him, mostly at 8am before he started the day's filming. Together we chose excerpts and I would then rerecord them with the finest musicians. Between them, Howard Shelley, Ralph Holmes and Rafael Wallfisch played excerpts from Schubert's E flat Trio, Bach's solo cello Partita in G some Ravel ('Le Gibet'). There was also a recording of some Lalo with violinist Madeleine Mitchell with whom I was to record a Naxos album of my music many years later (Music for strings and piano) and my own recording of 'Le Gibet' which was the version eventually used.

Tony wanted music for a strange erotic scene played between Deneuve and Sarandon in a set like an Egyptian temple. The script suggested the soprano duet from Lakme called 'Viens O Mallika' and I found an old Fifties recording of it. Tony liked it but didn't like the wobbly sopranos. I suggested we use two 'early-music' sopranos, Elaine Barry and Judith Pearce from 'London Voices' whom I conducted several days later singing magnificently with The Sinfonia of London. On the same recording session I improvised a piano version of the song and in the film we see Deneuve apparently playing it until sopranos and orchestra take over, cross-fading into the next scene. Tony loved it and two years later he rang me again:

'I've shot a commercial for British Airways with the shadow of a 747 going up the Empire State Building. Do you think you could get that opera piece we did to fit it?'

'I'll have a look at it.'

I arranged a special version of 'Viens, Mallika' from 'Lakme' and recorded with the girls for a second time. British Airways loved it and decided to use it as their global signature-tune, something that still happens 24 years later and quite possibly makes this theme the most long-running piece of ad music in history. The incessant airplays of it at the same time caused it to be an all-time operatic hit which sopranos all frequently perform and record. Tony used it incessantly repeated in 'True Romance', and Brian de Palma used it in 'Carlito's Way.'

Five years on from the recording Saatchi and Saatchi invited me to meet the President of BA at a celebratory drinks party. It was quite noisy with chatter and clinking glasses:

'Marvellous piece you wrote for us.'

'I didn't write it, I arranged and recorded it. It's from an opera by Leo Delibes called Lakme.'

'Yes terrific, but I often wonder why you wrote it in French.' (He obviously couldn't hear me.)

'Errr, well it's in French because it was written by a Frenchman -Leo Delibes.' (He gazed into the distance.)

'Marvellous piece. I've invested over nine million pounds in the advertising using it. I've often wondered what the French words actually say.'

'Oh I can tell you that. They say FLY AIR FRANCE.' In April I orchestrate 'Dances for two pianos' as Concert Dances for Orchestra.

I got a call from Adrian Noble at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

'I love your Snowman music. Have you ever composed incidental music for the theatre?'

'No'

'Would you like to score Henry V at Stratford? We have a new boy called Kenneth Branagh. Could you write the music like a film score?'

I thought how exciting this would be and wrote an unusual score. It featured in a Stratford seminar on theatre music and received excellent critical attention, later transferring to The Barbican.

In May, at the request of Raymond Gubbay (whose Snowman concerts at the Barbican have been a great success) suggests that I compose a 'Nursery Rhyme Overture'. I write this, and I conduct the premiere in St Albans. It is also a guessing game for children and has been a great success with audiences and used from there on as the Overture in many Snowman concerts.

I meet Georgina Ivor who has had excellent past experience working as an artist agent for Ian Hunter at Harold Holt Ltd. I play her 'Benedictus' on the Australian student tape and she thinks it is marvellous. She is interested in working in promotion for me. We start to plan a new 'professional' premiere of Benedictus. In September I get a call from Alan Hackney, who is author of the book from which the Peter Sellers hit film of the fifties was made - 'I'm All Right , Jack' . He comes to see me and suggests we write a musical. I think this is a great idea and start at once. I write most of the lyrics and the music and Alan writes the script. The first draft takes about 2 months.

In October, Adrian Noble and I research cathedral locations for a 'Benedictus' premiere. We choose St Albans.

In December I write a folky song for a prize-winning short animation film [opus 344]'The Wreck of the Julie Plante'{/opus].

Georgina has heard the 'Diversions' for cello and piano and suggests that they might be orchestrated and made into a cello concerto. She asks if I would like her to approach the great French cellist Maurice Gendron, for many years cellist with the Yehudi Menuhin trio. I am thrilled by this and go to France and work on it with him in Grez-sur-Loing near the house of Delius. He is a musician and artist of the very highest calibre. He asks me to write a new finale, to extend some of the movements, to orchestrate it for medium-sized orchestra and to write a cadenza. Later I meet him at the Ravel Festival in St Jean de Luz and in London until he finally pronounces himself satisfied with the work.

In March Adrian asks me to score 'As you like it' at Stratford. I am asked to write a score for it set in 1920 Chicago. Howevever when I arrive there it has become turn-of-the-century impressionist! I write a new score in the circle bar while they are rehearsing. I am not too pleased , but I like writing the songs and later adapt some of them for string quartet and tenor in Shakespeare Songs.

In the autumn Martin Kingsbury rang to tell me that the American toy firm 'Toys 'r' us' wanted to use 'Walking in the air' for a launch for six superstores, running the commercial six times a night on ITV through to Christmas. This was obviously a 'gift' in terms of promotion and I suggested that he contact Alan Street at CBS and ask them to use the existing Peter Auty version and re-launch it as a single. Martin said:

'..no, they want a new version and CBS don't want to make a new single...'

I was surprised about this. Had CBS Masterworks taken this opportunity it would have boosted their album gigantically. Martin Kingsbury suggested that a new treble called Aled Jones should do it and that EMI would like to put out a single. That is exactly what happened. The single went to number 3 in the hit parade and made Aled and 'Walking in the air' famous overnight.

In November The Philip Jones Brass Ensemble give the London premiere of Sinfonietta for brass (using the MS full version) for their farewell concert. The great father of brass playing, Harry Mortimer, says to me: 'If I could write for brass like that I'd never have bothered to play the trumpet'. He makes it the set piece for the Open Brass Championships in Manchester, and it is adapted by Bram Gay and in this version now called Fusions..

The huge success of Snowman prompted Channel 4 to ask TVC to make another music-based animation film by the same team. John Coates showed Diane and I a book called Granpa by John Burningham, but our mutual reaction was that it was a difficult subject and the fact that Granpa dies at the end too sad. We turned it down. However in 1985 my own father was aged 88 and the relationship that he had with my 6-year old daughter Catherine was very similar to that of the book. He and my mother lived in a similar sort of house, my father spent much of his time out in the potting shed and he loved telling stories. At Christmas he was in Brighton General Hospital and it happened that on New Year's Eve I took Catherine to visit him. The doctor in charge of him took me aside. He was suffering from kidney failure and would not last the week.

'I'm afraid he's going to die, Catherine.'

'Will he go to Heaven?'

'I hope so.'

I took Catherine back to Mortlake and tried to call a taxi. This proved difficult and while I waited I sat at the piano, feeling extremely sad. For no particlar reason I played 'Auld Lang Syne' through to myself, a song of both parting and remembrance. I wondered if one could write a counter-melody to it and jotted down the lyric 'Make-Believe'. It seemed to express the poignancy of the grandfather/granddaughter relationship. Catherine would always have memories of her grandfather and those memories would be happy. In that way he would remain in her mind and spirit.

Leaves are green and the grass it is growing Flowers bloom and the wind it is blowing Weave worlds of make-believe See to eternity Leaves are gold and the grass it is going Flowers fade and the wind it is blowing

Breathe no sigh for the day that is parting Welcome spring and the year that is starting Leave worlds of make-believe See to eternity Leaves are gold and the grass it is going Flowers fade and the wind it is blowing

A few days later, having written the song, I felt that I knew how I could set about a film score of 'Granpa'. I would make it a sort of children's TV opera, with solos, duets, trios choruses and even a coloratura soprano when the little girl dreams of being one when she grows up.

I met with John and Diane and they agreed to go forward with me.

'Who shall we have to play the part of Granpa?'

One of the names we thought of was Peter Ustinov.

'Granpa' got under way and CBS Masterworks get very interested in it as a follow-up to Snowman. Joe Dash came over from New York. They wanted to finance the recording and have big stars. They also started discussing the idea of signing me as a CBS artist. Joe agreed on Peter Ustinov as Granpa and Sarah Brightman to record 'Make-Believe'. On 26/27th September I was invited to the Royal Bath Hotel, Bournemouth for the annual CBS conference. They discussed their other artists like Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Barbra Streisand, Julio Iglesias etc and then came to the climax. Snow fell from the ceiling and a sledge down with a Snowman on it. The whole conference chanted 'CBS 7116!' (serial number of my album). In the bar I met MD Paul Russell and senior marketing executive Ian Groves. They offered me my own CBS recording label HB, up to 8 albums of my own music with an open budget and ability to renew. I was most impressed. We g0t into negotiations. Ian Groves was to look after me, but sadly my excellent man within CBS, Alan Street, disappeared from the team. By November I had finished the vocal score of Granpa. CBS were ready to make arrangements for an album plus a video and to be part of the promotion plan. Peter Ustinov and Sarah Brightman were happy to participate, my orchestra 'Sinfonia of London' would record the music and Terry Edwards' London Voices would take part along with The Wroughton Middle School Choir from Norfolk, who had won the BBC choir of the year award.

(I recently met Clare Kitson, who was head of animation for Channel 4 and is writing a book on their body of work. She believes Granpa is by far the most interesting of the TVC films and trail-blazing in the use of voices and music.)

The premiere of Benedictus in its final revision took place in St. Alban's Cathedral, masterminded by Georgina Ivor working in conjunction with an excellent colleague, David Laing. The choice of performers was outstanding: Robert Tear (tenor), Sir David Willcocks (conductor), The English Chamber Orchestra led by Joseph Froelich, The Very Rev. the Dean of St Albans (narrator), Frederick Riddle (solo viola), The St Albans Bach Choir, The St. Alban's Cathedral Choir, members of the Royal College of Music Chamber Choir and organist Andrew Parnell. Sir David with wonderful generosity spent innumerable hours checking and editing both vocal and orchestral scores. In a BBC interview on the day Sir David declared it a 'work for all ages'. I had been able to present the work as I wished it to be presented, and this magnificent performance will always remain with me as one of the supreme highlights of my life.

Frederick Riddle was now 74. I asked him if he would cimb up to a high gallery at the West end of the nave to play the Prologue. He did so and it sounded ethereal and wonderful (representing everyman coming in from the outside world). Unexpectedly the Interlude before part 2 sounded from the South Transept (the aspirant in the midst of the community?) and the Epilogue sounded from the East end ambulatory (the novice having entered in to the monastery?}. I congratulated Fred on this brilliant piece of stagecraft but he denied it:

'I was trying to find a really warm radiator. My hands were too cold to play.'

God moves in mysterious ways.

In May 1986 I was asked if I want to write a score for 'The Canterville Ghost' for Harlech/Columbia TV (UK/USA) , starring Sir John Gielgud and directed by Paul Bogart. I enjoy writing it and record at CTS on June 30th.

Faber and Faber, the book publishers, asked the Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes, to write a poem for the wedding of Fergie, the Duchess of York and they asked me to set it to music. It was called 'The Honeybee and the Thistle'and it was given its first (and perhaps only) performance on the Terry Wogan Show - Aled Jones treble, the Finchley children's choir, David Snell harp, Gary Kettel tubular bells and myself piano.

In the Autumn I was asked if I would score the film 'A Month in the Country' with Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth . I was busy on other projects at the time and wasn't at all sure I could fit it in. I went to a viewing and saw that the film was very profound, with a serious anti-war theme, but a certain amount of 'found' choral music had already been laid in by the editors. Pat O'Connor the delightful Irish director seemed keen for me to do it but I said I needed to think about it. He rang a couple of days later and asked if I'd decided. I replied that due to the use of choral inserts I could only see the score working as an elegy for string orchestra and I rather doubted that the producers would agree to such a thing. Pat insisted on seeing me and came over to my studio in Kensington that evening. 'Explain what you mean' he said and I explained that I loved the film and I thought the choral/orchestral music worked brilliantly but it was very big and rich and I felt a score would have to emerge from it and be very pure and expressive and quite small and that I could only hear this in my head as done by strings only. 'Play me something to show me what you mean' he said so I talked the film through and imrovised on the piano something of what I had in mind and ended by saying: 'It's probably not what you had in mind at all?' At this point to my great surprise Pat knelt on the floor and implored me to do the score. He said: 'It's exactly right, I can hear everything your suggesting and I just love it, please please do it!!'

How could I possibly refuse?

I recorded the score at CTS Studio 1 in November, conducting the strings of my own orchestra- The Sinfonia of London.

Georgina began to find me commissions. The first was an 8-part double choir for the opening of the Three Choirs Festival. I asked the Dean of Worcester if it should be in English or Latin. He says it can be in whatever I want. I read it in Latin. That night I am asleep and I hear the Kyrie in Latin as if it is coming through the ceiling of my studio. It is an inspiration. I write it down and then write the rest quite quickly. Larry, Suzy and I went down to Worcester Cathedral for the first performance within the opening festival thanksgiving service and later Dr. Donald Hunt conducted a beautiful recording of it for Abbey Records in the awe-inspiring acoustic of the Chapter House.

In 1987 Three Choirs Festival scheduled a performance of my dramatic oratorio ‘Benedictus’ in Worcester. The cathedral choir was in particularly fine form with a wide vocal range and advanced standard and the musical director Dr. Donald Hunt, who knew that I was coming down for the performance, aksed if I would be interested to compose a new setting of the communion service for the ambitious medium of a cappella (unaccompanied) double choir. I asked the Dean if the work should be in English or Latin but he said he would leave the decision to me. Several nights later I virtually ‘dreamed’ the intense opening Kyrie in Latin and this decided me. The four further movements followed soon after - an ambitious virtuosic ‘Gloria’, a solemn antiphonic ‘Sanctus’, a flowing contrapuntal ‘Benedictus’ in eight really separate parts (of which I’m particularly fond) and a minor-key Agnus Dei of great sadness which is redeemed by a move to the major only in the last four bars on the words ‘donna nobis pacem’. Festival Mass was commissioned for Three Choirs Festival with financial assistance from West Midland Arts and given its first performance at the opening service of the festival in Worcester Cathedral on August 5th 1987 by the Cathedral Choir trained and conducted by Donald Hunt.

On January 24th I hear that the Pittsburgh Philharmonic are performing The Snowman with Laurin Maazel. (Later, in the nineties, I am guest of honour at his wife's birthday party in Salzburg.) Snowman is being performed everywhere.

Georgina got me a second commission at Chester Festival to write a song cycle for tenor and string quartet. I adapted and re-worked one or two of the Stratford songs for concert performance and added other new ones to create 'Shakespeare Songs'. They were premiered superbly by Martyn Hill and the Medici String Quartet on May 22nd and got a terrific reception.

Georgina arranged for Benedictus to be performed in Manchester Cathedral with Martyn Hill; the John Knox church in Perth with Robert Tear and Sir David Willcocks; Llandaff cathedral with Maldwyn Davies; Chester Cathedral with Martyn Hill; Worcester Cathedral (3 Choirs Festival) with John Davis.

Margherita Stafford rings to ask me if I would be MD for a film of the life of Puccini with Placido Domingo. I meet director Irving Kershner ( Empire strikes back) who is very entertaining and we meet several times to discuss operatic film projects, but 'Puccini' does not go forward.

At Christmas Selfridges mount a 'Snowman wonderland' covering their top floor. It is later packaged and sent to Tokyo. There is a lot of merchandising. More each year. 150 firms making Snowman products.

I was so beset with business that I took on Larry Ashmore as my full-time orchestrator assistant. He orchestrated Concert Dances for Wind Orchestra, an arrangement of the Dances for two pianos, and it was played by BASBWE in the Buxton Festival. I was too busy to go. I lengthened 'The Song of Saint Francis and he scored it for larger orchestra for a performance at the Three Choirs Festival.

But the work that Larry assisted me with magnificently was Toccata-a Celebration of the Orchestra. I had written this back in 1976 as just 'Toccata' for the RPO's 30th birthday, but Larry and I both thought it would be worth substantially revising and I thought that if I got it into shape CBS might well sponsor a recording. In between innumerable business calls about Granpa the film, Granpa the CD, Granpa the contract, Benedictus concerts and Benedictus the CD, its publishing and promotion I rescored Toccata for large orchestra, writing 2 or 3 pages of full score a day in my room in short score while Larry wrote them out in full in the other room in transposed long score. At the fortissimo recapitulation of the main theme I pitched a lyrical piccolo solo against the entire orchestra fortissimo and at the end of a wearing day I went to see what Larry had done with it.

'Where's the piccolo solo Larry?'

'You'll never hear it.'

'But where have you put it?'

'I haven't. It won't work.'

'Don't tell me it won't work! I play the bloody piccolo!'

'Oh you play the bloody piccolo do you! Are you telling me how to orchestrate?!'

'Yes I am!'

'Well that's it!'

The piccolo solo went back in, but Larry marched out. We had finished the work just in time before our sell-by date!

A year later I conducted it with The Philharmonia and took the CBS album to Larry for his approval. He was absolutely delighted with it and we have never mentioned the piccolo again.

On January 24th I hear that the Pittsburgh Philharmonic are performing The Snowman with Laurin Maazel. (Later, in the nineties, I am guest of honour at his wife's birthday party in Salzburg.) Snowman is being performed everywhere.

Georgina gets me a second commission at Chester Festival to write a song cycle for tenor and string quartet. I adapt and re-work one or two of the Stratford songs for concert performance and add other new ones to create 'Shakespeare Songs'. They are premiered superbly by Martyn Hill and the Medici String Quartet on May 22nd and get a terrific reception.

Georgina arranges for Benedictus to be performed in Manchester Cathedral with Martyn Hill; the John Knox church in Perth with Robert Tear and Sir David Willcocks; Llandaff cathedral with Maldwyn Davies; Chester Cathedral with Martyn Hill; Worcester Cathedral (3 Choirs Festival) with John Davis.

Margherita Stafford rings to ask me if I would be MD for a film of the life of Puccini with Placido Domingo. I meet director Irving Kershner ( Empire strikes back) who is very entertaining and we meet several times to discuss operatic film projects, but 'Puccini' does not go forward.

At Christmas Selfridges mount a 'Snowman wonderland' covering their top floor. It is later packaged and sent to Tokyo. There is a lot of merchandising. More each year. 150 firms making Snowman products.

On 6th February 1988 Dr. Donald Mitchell relinquished his post as Chairman of Faber Music and handed control over to Robin Boyle and Tom Pasteur, a two-man business-team recently dismissed from Chester/Novello. Martin Kingsbury, who had run the company with Donald from its very beginning, was curiously not invited to be Chairman, but was asked to continue as 'Director of Publishing'. I met Donald at the Garrick for lunch and asked him why this was:

'It has all been incredibly difficult. Martin is not up to being an MD. In fact between you and me I frequently feel like strangling him!'

A surprising remark from the Doctor who won a Mahler Medal. A few days later Martin invited me to the Russell Hotel in Fitzrovia to meet company chairman Robin Boyle, who got straight to the point:

'You have too good a deal. Your percentage of royalties is far too high and unless you are prepared to change the percentage radically we will be forced to 'go slow' on you.'

'It was you who offerred the percentage and I have never disputed it. As for going slow, I would have thought it would be difficult to go much slower'.

'Your percentage is too high and we can't pay for promoting you unless you change it'.

'But you are taking 35% of my income already and I am myself paying Georgina £10,000 per year to do my own promotion'.

'You must realise that there are literally hundreds of brilliant composers queuing up in the street for the privilege of being published by Faber Music, which is the most prestigious classical contemporary music publishing firm in the world. All I have to do is go to Cambridge University, find the best-qualified young composer that they have had recently, sign him up and make Faber financially succesful from the proceeds. Composers don't succeed because of their talent, they succeed because we the publsher promote them and make them succeeed.'

'Well why don't you sign him up and I'll leave?'

I made briskly for the door. Not briskly enough, because I had just got to Holborn tube station when they caught up with me, panting from unusual exertion.

'No please, please Howard, we don't want you to leave, we didn't mean that at all. We will get our promotion department to really promote you as never before, Sally Cavender will do everything in her power, please give us another chance, it would be terrible if you left!'

I thought of all the work I'd done for them over six years, all the proofs I'd read and painfully corrected for hours and hours on end, all the publication that was already in existence, and I remembered how thrilled I'd been when I signed. I had no idea how I could publish anything myself. Computerised music-writing had not been invented and promotion could only be done through a global network of related companies. I weakened, subdued by flattery, and went back to the restaurant - a mistake. As my QC put it during the litigation some ten years later:

'They set out to achieve by stealth that which they could not achieve by honesty'.

What did they want to achieve? They wanted every last penny of the royalties from'The Snowman', but preferably without me attached to it.

They were as good as their word in one respect. They did go to Cambridge and ask who was the best recent student, the most suitable candidate seeming to be Thomas Ades who they signed up and set out to promote with all the money and power and influence that they could summon. Perhaps they were right and talent is not a 'divine and unusual gift bestowed by God' but a result of money and marketing. The intent was to create a younger, less-troublesome, simplified version of Howard Blake, a brand who would be in every way acceptable to the BBC, the Arts Council, the music-publishing, recording and media world and the opinion-formers of the 'cutting edge', a cost-effective brand which they would comfortably control. The existing Howard Blake was too old, too opinionated, and wrote embarassingly popular music which accorded with none of the establishment criteria. How would they set about it?

Martin Kingsbury had always complimented me on my dress-sense but now he could use what he'd learnt to the firm's advantage. He got Thomas Ades rigged out in clothes strikingly similar to my own - casual jackets, open-necked blue shirts, corduroys and loafers, with tousled hair and smile. He rang one day and asked if he could borrow a copy of Irene Samuels' 'Musical Maestros' in which I'd laid out my beliefs. He grafted these on to his creation and then briefed the creation to create similar works as those that the original model had waiting in the pipe-line: a work about Julian of Norwich, a violin concerto with high notes in it, an opera of 'The Tempest'. At the same time he was instructed to dismantle the original without giving the game away - appear to be supportive but not allow anything to come to fruition. All must be transferred to the new brand.

I saw the film 'The Talented Mr Ripley' almost as soon as it came out since it was nominated for best music at the British Academy Awards and I happened to be on the judging panel. Thank God I was! Patricia Highsmith was breaking completely new ground and I was hit by the shock of recognition. I was Dickie Greanleaf and Martin was Tom Ripley. The film caused me to think the unthinkable. I acted accordingly and by doing so I and my music survived.

Ian Groves at CBS/Sony came up with a writing commission for me and negotiated a huge fee for what Larry called 'the biggest commercial ever written'. I was asked to compose a large-scale overture to celebrate the launch of the Astra communications satellite. I was very excited about this as I had never written an overture and was interested in the form.

When I was at school every concert always had an overture, but gradually the idea had faded out as tastes have changed and programmes have got shorter. Overtures are really like one-movement symphonies, often in Sonata-form. They derived at first from overtures for operas, Rossini's being splendidly rumbustious examples. Beethoven took them up to a new level of importance and re-wrote one for 'Fidelio' no less than three times, coming up with Leonora number 3 which has to be the ultimate role model. Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Sibelius and many other composers followed in his footsteps. I now tried to follow them.

The directors of Astra flew over from Luxembourg to talk to me in my studio, joined by an affable London advertising man, David Pilton, my 'Director of Publishing', Martin Kingsbury and my 'Aand R man' from Sony, Ian Groves. I had completed an ambitious 15-minute work for large orchestra and called it 'The Conquest of Space'. I played it through to them on the piano:

'It's terrific! We shall play it all over Europe'

Ian Groves had other ideas:

'We can't let you do that.'

'Why not?'

'This was my idea and we're going to put it out on CBS/Sony.'

'Well that's fine. We can all work together.'

'I'm afraid not.'

'Well what on earth is the point of us commissioning it?'

Martin Kingsbury and Ian Groves sat motionless and silent and would not discuss it further. The Astra directors left and I realised that my two 'champions' had a different agenda. To this day I don't know what it was, but they were not on my side.

On December 8th Ian took me along to Astra's starry party in The Queen Elizabeth Hall, Westminster where we would watch the rocket launch from Nassau, linked by satellite TV. CBS had indeed recorded my piece and 'The Conquest of Space' was ready to be played on a huge sound system as the rocket took off.

But a little cloud was hanging over the launch pad. The launch was postponed, they did not play the music and at midnight everyone went home.

On 26 March the RPO premiere 'Diversions for cello and orchestra' at the Fairfield Hall in Croydon with Steven Isserlis as soloist and Sir Charles Groves to conduct it.

On April 6th Ian Partridge performs Shakespeare Songs at the QEH with the Coull Quartet. This is a good performance by a very good artist and later they record it for the BBC. It is broadcast on radio 3 with Vaughan Williams 'On Wenlock Edge' as BLAKE AND VAUGHAN WILLIAMS.

13th May there is a performance of Song of St Francis in Leyden, Holland, and Benedictus in Manchester Cathedral.

On June 2nd at the RFH there is an all-Howard Blake concert given by The Philharmonia and The Bach Choir. Steven Isserlis plays Diversions and I conduct, and Sir David conducts Benedictus with Robert Tear as tenor soloist. On June 8th I meet Joshua Bell with Steven Isserlis and talk about a violin concerto, and on another night Steven brings Nigel Kennedy over to my studio. Kenneth Essex comes as well and we play my piano quartet and some Schumann and go on to a jazz club in King's Cross. A great evening.

On July 5th I am made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music jointly with Felicity Lott and John Taverner. The Principal of the RAM Sir David Lang is very flattering and says I should be a Visiting Professor. 'How would that happen?' I say. 'Consider yourself one' he says. The following year I am asked to be Chairman of the Society of Fellows of the Royal Academy. I give three lectures, one in each term, also giving master classes to students. I talk about Writing for cinema, Writing Concertos, Writing as a profession.

On July 9th there is another all-Blake concert at the RFH with The Philharmonia. This has happened through the flamboyant modern art collector and prodigious social events organiser, Belle Shenkman. Belle introduces me to Ann Sirkett of the Book Club. We do a children's event: The Nursery Rhyme Overture, The Snowman and the concert premiere of Granpa (with London Voices). I conduct. Bernard Cribbins narrates Snowman as he has done many times before.

My friend David Kingsley is 60 and is giving a huge bash on HMS President on the Thames by the Guildhall. He has invited me to play my Piano Quartet and to perform the New National Songbook at the party. The Stephen Hill Singers come to my studio to rehearse with me and with them is soprano Helen Lloyd. I have been invited to a wedding in a chateau in France, and ask her if she would like to come and sing there. I will compose a song for her and we can do a recital. The bride is the only daugher of my old friends the Deschamps and her name is Isabelle. I write a song called 'Isabelle' and everyone is enchanted. The wedding is in a tiny village in Lozere in a manoir with turrets- La Roche. It is most romantic and soon afterwards I propose to her and she becomse my third wife.

Following up the success of the boat party and Radio 2 , I plan a concert for The Stephen Hill Singers as part of The St Andrews Festival in Gorleston, Yarmouth in 1990. In addition to The New National Songbook I make special 5-part arrangements of The Christmas Lullaby, The Wreck of the Julie Plante, Love a Round, So we'll go no more a-roving and Walking in the air. Helen sings soprano and I play and introduce and direct and we do a most enjoyable concert version of Granpa with the Norfolk Youth Orchestra.

I meet Adrian Noble and compose some music for Ibsen with the RSC at the Barbican. The Master Builder - a Troll Dance for brass quartet.

Evelyn Glennie visits me with her agent Sarah Dyckhoff and we talk about my writing a concerto for her. One day I realise that Diversions would arrange extremely well for Marimba and I score Diversions for Marimba and Orchestra(a re-arrangement of the work for cello). But Evelyn says she did not ask for a marimba concerto or a re-arrangement and it is put to one side. It is a pity. Several years later I do a very succesful performance of it with percussionist Heather Corbett at the RCM.

At Christmas there are 'Snowmen' with the CBSO and Simon Halsey, Roy Castle with the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, The Barbican with Sinfonia of London and many many more.

I composed a tribute to Martin Kingsbury a Paean for solo viola for his 25th anniversary as publishing director of Faber Music.

I wrote a Jubilate Deo for a Presbyterian church in Abington, Pennsylvania, where Sir David had given a performance of 'Benedictus' and 'Six Romantic Pieces' for clarinet for Thea King, arrangements from various sources. I wrote some solo horn music for a Jonathan Kent theatre production of Ibsen at the Almeida with Claire Bloom and Espen Skjonberg- 'When we dead waken', and an arrangement of one of my Shakespeare songs for an icelandic counter-tenor, Sverrier Gud-Johannson, to sing at Ruskin Spear's funeral: Fear no more the heat of the sun. Ruskin Spear was a great portrait painter and had been a great friend.

At Easter I wrote words and music for a Christmas Lullaby. It was recorded later by a student ensemble which I conducted at the RAM and then broadcast on Classic FM on Christmas Day. The soprano soloists were Emma Bell and my wife Helen. This lovely duet had several later transformations- notably becoming the carol in the Snowman Stage Show, re-arranged for SATB and orchestra.

Through the good offices of the wonderful Belle Shenkman, Ann Sirkett of The Book Club commissioned a Christmas work for The Bach Choir and London Brass. I arranged two of the solo Songs of the Nativity for chorus and 8 brass and composed two new ones, making Four Songs of the Nativity. Sir David Willcocks rehearsed them in the extraordinary acoustic under the dome but at the performance, unexpectedly and most graciously, he handed over the baton allowing me to conduct his superb Bach Choir for the premiere.

I created Serenade for Wind Octet as a commission for The Seaton Festival for The Camerata and clarinettist Janet Hilton. The first movement was derived from an early wind quartet, the first piece I wrote on arriving at the mill, the second from 'Come una marcia lente' in 'Lifecycle', the third from an incomplete early flute concerto. But I was frantic with preparations for the CBS album and didn't have time to go down to Dorset to hear the premiere. Very kindly my father-in-law John Lloyd travelled down there and made a recording, which was splendid.

Just before Christmas 1989 Rodney Stewart, the chairman of The Philharmonia rang me and asked if I would compose a Piano Concerto for Princess Diana's 30th Birthday. A full-scale commission. What a wonderful thing to happen! What a marvellous offer! I immediately started sketching ideas - but they were less than inspired. Nothing but the best would be suitable for Diana, the People's Princess. I adored her. I started looking at scores of the innumerable great piano concertos by all the great composers, and wondering if I dare write one at all. It was a very daunting prospect.

On Valentine's Day 1990 it happened that Robin Boyle and his wife Ruth come to dinner at the studio. It was a very happy evening and we talked a lot about the Princess and what a delightful person she was:

'I would like the concerto to be a portrait of her and the opening motif should contain the possibilities of a complete picture within it'.

'How would you do that?'

'There should be a very simple motif that is innocent and gay and full of life and compassion and joy all at once. Like her.'

There was an electric piano in the dining room and I get up from the table and played a simple 4-note motif that came into my head from nowhere at all. I knew immediately that it would be the basis of the work. I kept hearing the opening in my head but although I continually wrote sketches I could never get any further to my satisfaction. One afternoon after lunch down in Brighton I dozed off and dreamed of a counter-melody set against it, but unbelievably high up. I wrote it down for very high violins. The combination of these two strands worked wonderfully and the whole of movements 1 and 3 derived from it. It was a big first movement of about twelve and a half minutes and I was delighted with the form of it. It was brought to a close by a quiet cadenza. I rang The Philharmonia and asked if they had got anyone to agree to play it yet.

Rodney told me that he was having difficulty. Evgeny Kissin had been proposed but he hadn't the time and all the other big pianists seemed to be engaged for years in advance or didn't have time to learn a new work. Rodney said that 'the boys all say you could play it yourself' - 'boys' being the members of The Philharmonia. I considered this. I said that I would have to practise extremely hard. This didn't seem to bother Rodney but it certainly bothered me. As I wrote the second and third movements I started to practise them at the same time. Meanwhile CBS/Sony seemed to be delighted by the idea of an album: 'Concerto for a Princess'. With it we could record the cello concerto Diversions and the concerto for orchestra, Toccata and dates were fixed for a recording in December.

I practised the concerto like mad once I'd finished it. The recordings took place on 19-21 December and went wonderfully, with Sir David Willcocks conducting the concerto and myself conducting Diversions and Toccata. Robert Cohen was the soloist in Diversions and my dear friend Christopher Palmer produced the album. I played the solo piano part from memory on the brand-new £90,000 Fazioli concert grand which Sony studios had just bought. It felt as if I'd done it all my life. These sessions for me were like going to heaven.

Not so for Ian Groves from Sony. He came to hear Toccata and was scared stiff. He was unused to classical orchestral sessions and thought I was bullying the players. In fact everybody was enjoying themselves immensely even if it was exacting. But I started to wonder how he would manage with the Royals.

The concert at the RFH with Princess Diana was due to take place on 19th May. We had recorded the album in December to give plenty of time to get the album out. To me it seemed as if the offer of a piano concerto commission for Diana was the greatest opportunity for a record company that one could possibly imagine. But then I was told that the Palace did not want to have publicity in regard to the concerto, which was a great disappointment.

Anneka Rice called me one day in April and asked if I would 'Challenge Anneka'. The challenge was to write a piece of choral music for a one minute film to support the 'Paralympics'. The film would be shot simultaneously at the White City Stadium and while it was being edited I could take timings, then orchestrate and record. All to be done in 24 hours and shown on TV at 11. 00 pm. I thought this would be fun. I wrote 'Dare All!' for large chorus and orchestra. We booked St Johns Smith Square and Orchestra and asked as many of the LPO and London Symphony Chorus to get there as were able. They responded maginificently. I wrote the parts out myself, copied them on my Xerox machine and whizzed down there in Anneka's 'batmobile'. The film was wonderful and very moving. I went to ITV at 11 to see the broadcast go out, with many paraplegics present who thought it was a great thing for them. While we were waiting I talked to Bernard Atha who thought it was amazing that I could do such a thing. He turned out to be in charge of arts for the City of Leeds, who were about to have a centenary. Could I write a violin concerto 'where everybody would stand up and cheer at the end?'. Perhaps for Nigel Kennedy?

The RFH concert on May 19 was wonderful. I had considerable nerves. I lay on the couch in the solo artists dressing room and thought the concerto through to check memory. Half way through the first movement I couldn't remember what should happen next. I began to sweat. Then I thought: I just have to go out there and trust. Jump off the cliff. I walked out onto the platform looking up at HRH Diana, The Princess of Wales in the Royal Box looking magnificent in a blue dress with a diamond tiara. I sat down with the orchestra and the minute I began all was magical. I thought: this is the most marvellous thing one could do in this world. To play my own music supported by an orchestra of 'angels'. We invited many friends to the dressing room for champagne, among them Vivian Ellis and Harvey Goldsmith. The artists were invited to meet the Princess . I spoke to her for quite a while and was utterly charmed. She was well-informed on music and radiated interest and delight in life. Jonathan Morrish who ran PR at Sony managed to get a photo of me with Diana and I gave her a copy of the new CD with the concerto and a score of it that I had had bound in silk at Asprey's. I received a lovely letter from her, thanking me.

The first result of this was that Brighton Philharmonic rang to ask if I would put together a complete Howard Blake concert for their next season in The Dome. Could I also write a choral piece for 'all the children in Brighton to sing with the symphony orchestra'? We could do The Snowman, the Piano Concerto and Concert Dances. Could I both play and conduct? I composed a piece called 'The Bells' on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe. It was distinctly spooky, with screams and hisses, but the children enjoyed it enormously.

On June 23rd there is a performance of The Shakespeare Songs at the Charleston Festival by Martyn Hill and Robert Cohen's String Ensemble.

Larry Westland of Music for Youth , another contact of Georgina's, asks me to write a piece to save school music and the teaching of music to the young. We evolve an idea to have the whole of the RFH filled with young musicians and singers, to invite arts persons from the major political parties and make a statement.

I write words and music of 'Let Music Live!' for 1,600 players, chorus and organ. We do it on July 7th with Simon Rattle conducting and myself playing the organ. There are 200 cellists on the stage and Simon has to stand on top of the organ console. The hundreds of other players find where to stand with the use of coloured balloons. They pin the music to the back of the player in front. Sir Charles Groves attends and says it is 'the greatest event in the history of youth music'. It is a huge success in all the papers and media featuring on nine different front pages in colour!

I was commissioned to write Christ Church Mass for 5 voice-parts for Christ Church, Kensington and it was performed there on July 21 and October 18/19.

I was thinking about the Violin Concerto commission and had written to Nigel Kennedy's agent asking if would be interested, but I hadn't had a reply. I go to Austria to stay with my dear friend Ilona von Ronay and her family at Schloss Rosenegg. The day we arrive I hear the most wonderful violin playing from the next room and am completely enchanted. I suddenly remember a theme that I have written several years earlier and I think how marvellous it would sound played by this violin. I write it out with a rough piano part and take it out onto the terrace where the violinist is sitting. Her name is Christiane Edinger, she is from Berlin and is in the castle to play the unaccompanied Bach Partitas. I show her the sketch and asks her if she thinks it would be a good start to a violin concerto. She says 'Let's try it' and we go down to Bruckner's birthplace in Steyr and play it. It sounds fabulous as she plays it and she says she would love to perform such a concerto if I complete it. I tell her about the commission for the City of Leeds. I am fired up by it.

I write Archangel's Lullaby for a young cellist and two grown-up cellists. It is very short but premiered by Rafael Wallfisch, his son Gabriel and Steven Isserlis at Barnes Music Club in January.

In December I've been asked by The Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, to write words and music for a hymn for the Church Urban Fund, to 'revive the Church of England!!'. I write Faith alone can build a city and after the performance I have lunch with both of the Archbishops of England. We talk about George Herbert and hymns and William Blake.

I am asked to review a superb art book called Music: passion for an art. My review is published in Arts Review. I enjoy doing this, almost as much as writing music.

I gradually start to work on the Violin Concerto down in Brighton. I am consumed with it as I once was with Benedictus back in 1979. It takes me until July to compose the piano score. The first movement is the biggest single movement I have written, lasting 20 minutes. The second movement is a requiem to my mother. The third a set of brillante variations after two deeply serious movements. The whole work is about 35 minutes long and I finish the orchestration on the 30th.

All sorts of performances and events have happened through this year of composition: Benedictus in cathedrals, The Song of St Francis, the Serenade, Diversions, a jazz piece called Passing Time, (with a theme derived from The Lost Continent film of many years earlier), the Piano Concerto at Kenwood, and The Station for a week in a theatre appropriately called The Platform, in the town of its inception, Haywards Heath. However the violin concerto has taken pride of place over everything else .

At one point I nearly enter politics. Conservative politician David Mellor adores The Snowman and his son sings the treble part in a concert at The Barbican. Later David narrates it at St John's, Smith Square and I become acquainted with him. He is Minister of The Arts and appoints me to his government steering committee on The Arts. But as I set off to the very first meeting in Whitehall I open the paper and see that he has been well and truly framed by the Antonia de Sancha scandal. We have the meeting, but everybody knows it will be the only one. A great shame for the Arts because David has a wide and informed knowledge of music and would have been more than excellent.

The early part of the year is full of tragedy and I start to experience symptoms of stress again, with visits to Dr. Sharma, vitamin transfusions, meditation therapy and periods of bronchitis on anti-biotics.

In January my dear friend Diane Jackson, who directed both Snowman and Granpa, died of cancer.

In May my dear friend Christopher Palmer who was for me the greatest and most passionate writer on film and English music and champion of my music, was taken ill and died in a nursing home, apparently of Aids. I learned later that he had asked Faber for a study score of Granpa to read, on what turned out to be his deathbed. He was a very great loss to the world of music.

Christopher had worked a great deal with Faber and Faber Music and I rang Martin Kingsbury the publishing director of Faber Music to ask if he had any information about the funeral. He said: 'How the hell should I know!'I should have taken heed of this callousness.

In July I met Stanley Myers for dinner and he asked me if I still went to Dr Sharma and did I think he was good. I asked why, but he said nothing. He had contracted leukaemia and died three months later. At his memorial service I conducted a movement of his Concerto for Saxaphone with John Harle as soloist. Stanley will be remembered for ever for his theme 'Cavatina' and I was fortunate to have played on the first recording of it in the sixties. We would often work together.

The fourth of my close friends, Alan Clare, also died in 1993. A ballad pianist, beloved by Frank Sinatra, who used to invite him out to Palm Springs every year to play at his week-long house party summer, he was beloved by all musicians who love wonderful harmonies. Often he would drop on just to show me a new chord or say 'listen to this progression' in a work of Bartok or Ravel- or more often Duke Ellington or Harold Arlen.

The premiere of the Violin Concertotakes place conducted by Paul Daniel with the Northern Phiharmonic Orchestra in Leeds Town Hall on February 6th. I give a talk , do press and TV and radio with Christiane Edinger. She performs it magnificently and the audience give a tremendous ovation.

But as the ovation rolls round the auditorium my publisher, Robin Boyle, director of Faber Music, rises to his feet, turns his back on me and walks out of the hall. I should have seen this as an indication of the nightmare that was to come.

On the other hand my friend Michael Webber who directs the English Heritage concerts is there in the audience and loves it. He programmes it at a Kenwood Lakeside Concert later that year.

On April 17th Robert North invites me to Gothenburg to talk about a Snowman Ballet. We begin to create the scenario and we discuss the idea of new dances which I begin to sketch out: the Footprints Dance, the Calypso, the Reindeer Dance, the Robot, the Pas de deux and perhaps an adaptation of 'Toccatina' from 'Lifecycle' for a 'Dance of the Three Tops.'

The marriage to Helen has petered out. She has told me that she would be happier with a naval officer or a doctor or an airline pilot or even a concert pianist and by some miraculous synchonicity had now met a naval doctor who flies a helicopter and plays the piano. No hope for me at all! She has gone.

But I still talk to her on the phone although she has left me. She says she will never come back if I go on writing music. I am once again confronting the problem of Orpheus,torn limb from limb by the Maenads. I say I will never write another note. I had been asked repeatedly if I would compose a work for the tercentenary of the Mary Erskine girls school in Edinburgh and had spoken to the head of music, a wonderfully forthright and energetic musician called Helen Mitchell. I suggest a Robert Louis Stevenson song-cycle or some songs on classic Scottish poems. I write two of these: Two Scottish Songs: Coronach and My Peggy. Helen my wife asks me to take her to Edinburgh for an attempt at getting back together, to visit some friends of hers there and for me to tell the school that I don't write music any more. I go to the school and play the Two Scottish Songs, but say that I don't believe they are very interesting. The headmaster, Patrick Tobin, asks about the Robert Louis Stevenson idea. I say I think RLS is old-fashioned and the girls will think it a bit twee. The headmaster says he's not interested in what they think- he wants to hear what I will compose! Anyway, he says: 'It didn't put Mahler off! I say that the only way it might work would be to write very simple voice lines and put all the colour in the orchestra. As I say this I can suddenly hear the whole thing. I could write it in three days. They are delighted. I go off to meet Helen for lunch. She asks me if I cancelled the commission. I say: ‘ it will only take me three days, it is nothing.’ She goes completely crazy at this and says that it is the absolute end of our relationship.

I called the piece The Land of Counterpane and wrote the vocal/piano score between May 9th and 14th.

On Tuesday June 8th Robert North rings to say that our ballet 'The Annunciation' is on in the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. When? Tonight! Can you come? I welcome the opportunity to escape from London and from my despair about Helen. Later the same day I find myself in a huge basement hall peopled by mafia-looking men in black shirts and white ties. I am playing pool with Robert and his associate choreographer Julian Moss with his Swedish fiancee Scylla. She is wearing very brief denim hotpants and every time she leans to make a shot there is a sharp intake of breath and a sigh as all the men playing pause and stare. Robert and I discuss Snowman and further dances, we discuss Doktor Faustus and a ballet on Casanova and a ballet on Lady Hamilton. One evening we go to a dance school gala in the open air and wake up a restaurant and a guitarist at 3. 00 am with a party of 30 to eat magnificent pasta and listen to Neapolitan songs to a guitar until daybreak. On Friday I go by hydrofoil to Ischia for lunch with Lady Susanna Walton and Lord Goodman in the miraculous Walton villa overlooking the bay of Nalpes - Christopher Palmer has given me an introduction. We discuss the Arts Council and the PRS and the music of Sir William - which I love.

Back in London Martin Kingsbury has arranged for me to meet theatre director Bill Alexander at The Barbican where he is directing Shakepeare for the RSC. He tells me that he is going to revive the Tony Clarke pantomime version of Snowman at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre where he is now artistic director. Tony Clarke is now his assistant there and they have already booked the choreographer and himself to direct it and are advertising it for Christmas. I am horrified by this since Martin Kingsbury knows very well that I will not allow permission for my music to go forward with this production which I thought appalling. I explain this to Bill and say he would have to do it without my music.

'But the music is the entire reason it's a hit' he says 'What on earth can we do?'

'Well' I said, 'I've just completed a ballet of it in Sweden. Why don't you ask Robert North if he'd let you do that?'

‘We’re not a ballet company, Howard! How are we going to do it?’

‘You can audition for dancers who can act and mime. We can create new characters and add extra mime scenes and I’ll write a whole lot more music.’

‘What about words?’

‘You don’t need words in a ballet and there weren’t any words in Raymond’s book. Anyway, who ever heard of a talking snowman?!'

Bill became fired by the idea:

‘As soon as people walk into the theatre the whole stage must look as if it’s snowing. At the end when the boy sees that the Snowman’s melted he looks up and it starts to snow again. He realises that the Snowman can be built again. Then we can have the longest and most joyous walk-down in history!’

It was decidedly touch-and-go. John Stalker, executive producer for the theatre, had misgivings but bravely gave it the go-ahead. I moved into a room in the theatre to work on it with Bill right up to the opening night. We just about made it. It was a bit rough in places but it looked great and the audience seemed to love it.

I said: 'Pat could choreograph it and I could write some more plot and music.'

I worked on this version and ended up in November scoring a further 30 minutes of show in about two weeks, working in a studio flat in the theatre right next to the rehearsal room. Everything was late and disorganised. The copyist tells me on the day before the band rehearsal that he has only copied the first act. John Stalker the theatre manager phones up music students who sit up all night in the attic copying. Despite all this the show is a huge commercial success and runs for about 90 performances.( In 1997 I was to insist on Robert North choreographing this Birmingham version when it is revived and Neil Mundy of Reiner Moritz creates a film of it.

I had been asked repeatedly if I would compose a work for the tercentenary of the Mary Erskine girls school in Edinburgh and had spoken to the head of music, a wonderfully forthright and energetic musician called Helen Mitchell. I suggested a Robert Louis Stevenson song-cycle or some songs on classic Scottish poems. I write two of these: Two Scottish Songs: [opus483]Coronach[/opus] and My Peggy. I went to the school to present them without much commitment, but the headmaster, Patrick Tobin, asked about the Stevenson idea. I said I thought RLS was perhaps a bit old-fashioned and the girls would think it a bit twee. The headmaster said he was not interested in what they thought- he wanted to hear what I would compose! I said that the only way it might work would be to write very simple voice lines and put all the colour in the orchestra. 'Well that's all right', he said,'It didn't put Mahler off!'

I called the piece The Land of Counterpane and wrote the vocal/piano score between May 9th and 14th. An arts film producer called Chris Hunt came to see me to suggest our working together on a TV commission. However when he walked into the room he immediately saw the manuscript of 'Land of Counterpane' lying on the piano, became very excited about it and wanted to make another Snowman out of it- an animated film. I wrote a script for it, turning the song-cycle into a story of RLS's sickly childhood and how his Imagination caused him to Live. Chris Hunt contacted Pat Gavin, designer of the South Bank Show who set out on a 500-page storyboard. BBC 2 Music and BBC Enterprises and Scottish Film Fund together put up £1,000,000 to make it. I add an overture and we do a demo with Ron Corp and his children's vocal group. But suddenly Pat decides not to 'hand -draw' it but to make statues and animate them by computer technology. The result is less than astounding. Tempers start to fray. Scottish Film Fund pull out because nobody is Scottish, although Pat Gavin thinks his grandmother might have been! He is suddenly struck down with a rare blood disease and the project grinds to a sad halt.

At the start of 1994 I had still not got over Helen leaving and was still pondering over the enigma of The Muse and why women cannot live with artists (0r artists with women). Michael Webber asked me if I would compose a piece for the 10th anniversary of English Heritage to be performed at Lakeside on Hampstead Heath that summer. Hampstead was where Keats lived and where he wrote the ultimate poem about 'The White Goddess', 'La belle dame sans merci'. I got out the collected works and found - Lo and behold! it had been written exactly 175 years before the date of the concert, in 1819. This coincidence somehow inspired me to the idea of a tone-poem on the subject and I set to work to create the piano score. As I finished it I found that it was exactly 175 bars long. Miranda Jackson wrote: 'The work reflects the varying moods of the poem, with the siren's song represented by the flute and the knight's leit-motif on the cellos leading to a terrifying portrayal of the knight's nightmare scored for full orchestra. It received a thundering premiere by the Wren Orchestra conducted by Hilary Davan Wetton on 2nd July somewhat marred by a firework and rocket display mistakenly let off in the middle!

A letter arrived on my desk with the insignia of 10 Downing Street. I was so nervous about what it might be that I didn't open it for a week. Could it be a tax problem or an investigation of some sort? I opened it. It was to ask if I would accept an OBE. I breathed again. Helen had long since broken off relations and on 15th February the day of the investiture I took Tricia, Christopher and Catherine all dressed up for it. A military man instructed me to bow and walk backwards from the throne.

'I understand you write music,' said Her Majesty.

'Yes, for instance I composed a piano concerto for Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales - on her birthday.'

This was the wrong thing to say.

'So you keep busy then' she said and pressed my hand in dismissal. I started to turn round, then remembered I should be walking backwards, tried to do so and went in the wrong direction - most embarassing!

The Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra were about to celebrate their 5oth anniversary and Kathy Atkins, their manager, rang me one day asking if I would be interested to create some sort of a song-cycle for mass children's chorus and symphony orchestra. I liked the idea and suggested settings of classic texts on the subject of animals. I called the work [opus 468] 'All God's Creatures' and when I'd got the idea under way I proposed to Katy that we ask children from all over Hampshire if they would like to audition to sing in the first performance in the cathedral. There would also be an art competition for the best paintings of the animals depicted in the songs. The response was colossal and we ended up with such a large choir (1,700) and such an application for tickets that we had to perform it two nights running!

The work begins with an excerpt from William Blake's 'Auguries of Innocence' spoken by children over the sound of the orchestra, leading dramatically into the first song. 'The Tiger' and then to a gentle setting of his 'The Lamb'. Tennyson's 'The Owl' is treated sardonically ('warming his five wits') and 'The Snail' of John Bunan very smoothly, featuring a solo violin. 'Rats' are squeaky, noisy and rumbustious, but 'The Swan' follows with grace and peace, led by the harp. The seventh song takes a passage from the Book of Job - 'Leviathan'. Is it a whale or a sea-monster or a dragon?. The music conjures up a picture of a giant whale, using organ, full brass and even a thunder sheet! The eighth song summons up Lewis Carroll's smiling crocodile of the Nile, using conga drums and marimba; then follows 'The Swallow' by Christina Rossetti, a swooping evocation of flight and sun, and 'The Oxen' by Thomas Hardy. The work ends as it began with children speaking over orchestral sounds, now very quiet, the words again by Christina Rossetti, 'Hurt no living thing'.

When we came to rehearse I found it impossible to see the whole choir and had to conduct from the top of a ladder, but it was a howling succeess and both children and parents loved it.

Not so Robin Boyle who once again performed his back-turning routine. The love of animals shown by Blake's poems, the antipathy towards killing harmless ones shown by Christina Rossetti - none of the chosen texts agreed with Faber Music's extreme right-wing capitalist outlook, which was becoming ever more apparent - definitely not CIA-approved!

I was contacted one day by Glynne Evans, a beautifully-spoken lady from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She was empowered to commission a work for the occasion of nothing less than the 50th Anniversary of The United Nations. An event was to be held at Westminster Hall, within the Houses of Parliament, and it would take place in the presence of HRH The Queen,The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles, John Major The Prime Minister, members of the House of Commons and House of Lords and many executives and high-ranking military from UNO. The whole ceremony was to be televised by BBC and broadcast globally.

I was summoned to a meeting in Whitehall and asked if I could write not only for choir and orchestra but also for the state trumpeters of the Household Cavalry who would be there up on a balcony behind the Royals. I was informed that these fanfare trumpets could be pitched in either B flat or E flat. I decided to pitch the whole piece in B flat and therefore to write for B flat trumpets. I asked:

'What should the text be?'

'It should be from the Charter of the United Nations and we'll give you a copy. It was written by Field-Marshall Smuts in 1945.'

I took it home and decided that I could use words from the preamble, but interspersed with some Latin words which would sing well and give a feeling of gravitas: 'fides! libertas! pace!'

A few days before the event Ms. Evans came over to my studio with Martin Kingsbury and we discussed a title for the piece. Kingsbury suggested 'Charter for Peace' and Glynne agreed. It seemed very appropriate - surely the idea of the United Nations was to preserve peace?

However, shortly before the date a complication arose when it was found that the state trumpeters would only have E flat instruments in the musicians' gallery where they were positioned. I was summoned to an urgent last-minute meeting and told that the Queen was not happy with the change from E flat to B flat since it would involve her trumpeters marching to the back of the hall, putting down their E flats and picking up their B flats. This would not only take up time but also the noise of their heavy boots marching on stone floors would be upsetting to The Queen and if I wished to pursue this path the whole hall would need to be re-carpeted. Accusing fingers seemed to be pointing in my direction and I even felt that perhaps I was going to be asked to foot the bill! I explained that I'd already written and rehearsed the parts and it would be difficult to change. We seemed to have reached an impasse when a Colonel of the Welsh Guards sitting at the end of the table piped up:

'My boys'll be there and they can blow the fuck out of it!'

It was resolved!

The day of the great event I felt unusually nervous - in fact I experienced panic on the way to Westminster, stopped the taxi and was violently sick in St. James's Park - something I hadn't been for many years. I rushed home and changed and pulled myself together, but when I got into Westminster Hall I found myself shaking with fear. Why? I couldn't imagine. I never had nerves at concerts or on TV or anywhere anymore. It was as if the concatenation of all these political and military people were generating some sort of atmosphere of menace and I was picking up on it.

Everybody filed in, The City of London Sinfonia took their places, The Joyful Company of Singers (looking extraordinarily unjoyful!) and the conductor Steuart Bedford. All the dignitaries were there save the Royal Family. We waited patiently and the hall began to heat up with the vast crowd within it.

The band played selections from Rochard Rodgers and time went by. Twenty minutes, forty-five minutes...we waited...it was becoming unbearably hot. A rumour went around that the BBC were not to film the ceremony after all.

What was wrong? At last after about one hour The Queen and her Consort appeared followed sullenly by the Heir to the throne. The service commenced.

The Band of the Welsh Guards saved the day as we hoped by playing their own B flat instruments, but the sound of their brilliant trumpets came from the side of the throne rather than from behind Her Majesty, causing her considerable surpise. She looked round sharply and almost jumped into the air (the sound had clearly never come from there before!) In fact it was the first time for a number of things, since a full orchestra had apparently never played in Westminster before before, the state trumpeters had never joined with an orchestra before, and the 'reserve' band had never produced and sounded their fanfare trumpets before! Protocol was disturbed.

At the end the parliamentary officer 'Black rod' summoned me from my seat to drive with three ex-heads of UNO to Buckingham Palace in a Rolls-Royce with outriders. I was ushered into the private drawing-room where the Queen met me:

'I liked it!'.

'Thank you Your Majesty.'

Prince Philip did not agree.

'Too many words Court Composer! Too many words!

'They are words from the Charter of the United Nations, Your Highness.'

'Good Lord are they really?'

Of course all of the words had been printed in the programme and had been scrutinised and approved. This was something else. I realised that Philip had seen 'Amadeus' and borrowed the line:

'Too many notes Court Composer, Too many notes!'

But I couldn't say this.

'Too many words Court Composer! piped up Charles, not to be outdone.

I don't think there was a problem with the music. Many of the attendees expressed their approval and enjoyment of it, especially Lord Howe and the Welsh contingent. Why had the BBC not filmed the event? Why had their been such a huge delay? Why didn't they like the words? The only conclusion I've ever come to is that the title 'Charter for Peace' was not a suitable name to give to an event employing thousands of military. Silly of me!

Could Kingsbury have set this trap deliberately? It's possible. He was somehow present, envious of a pale grey suit I was wearing and somehow excluded from the drawing-room. He had reason to feel aggrieved. Somebody was feeding the idea around that the music 'sounded like Schoenberg'. Nobody else could possibly have come up with such a ludicrous analogy other than Kingsbury. He would see it as a piece of spiteful poetic justice which only I would grasp.

At the 60th anniversary of The United Nations Organisation in 2005 and for my own amusement I revised the orchestration for standard orchestra with trumpets and horns and created a new and more thoughtful ending.

Three piano pieces sketched when I was writing virtually nothing in 1959 suddenly suggested themselves for a suite for guitar. A brilliant guitarist from Brighton called Richard Durrant approached me and 'Prelude,Sarabande and Giguewas the result, which he premiered at St John's Smith Square.

A BBC programme called 'Lost film scores' produced from me a sudden revision of 'Suite for orchestra from the film Agatha' which was premiered at The Barbican by The BBC Concert Orchestra and broadcsat on Radio 3 on 20th May conducted by Carl Davis.

Another lost piece from the past 'Sonata for two pianos'(first sketched in 1971) was given its first ever performance by Wayne Marshall and myself in a concert at The King's Lynn Festival on July 28th. We also played theDances for two pianos and Rachmaninov's Suite opus 17.

Kingsbury was present, but not supportive. Some baracking took place both before and after the concert and the affable vicar suddenly became most unaffable - who knows what mischief had been poured in his ear.I would have loved to give further concerts with Wayne but this possibility was blocked, as so many others.

I went to Austria on 25th August to visit my very dear friends the von Ronays in Schloss Rosenegg. Ilona and I had tickets for the Salzburg Festival and off we went to see Don Giovanni with Domingo and the following night Bluebeard's Castle/Erwartung with Jessye Norman, joined seemlessly to prevent the audience from leaving after the Bartok in order to miss the Schoenberg! On the third night we stayed home and I played the piano for a while including some of my 12 Preludes, originally written for Ashkenazy and on the Friday I accompanied Ilona to a song recital by Frederika von Stade in the Mozarteum. At the end of a wonderful concert we went backstage and drank champagne with the artists and with an amazing assembly that included the Furstenburgs, the Hapsburgs, the Prince of Bavaria, the Hohenzollerns, extraordinary aristocratic family names that I had learnt about in history classes at school. I was talking to Camilla von Hapsburg-Lothringen and her father Maximilian when suddenly Ilona interrupted the festivities, calling for silence:

'My dear friend Howard Blake the English composer and pianist has written the most lovely set of Twelve Preludes which I would like to request that he plays for us - now!'

'But where Ilona? The hall's closed.'

'Don't worry about the hall, we own the hall! You go in and start playing and we shall all take candles and creep in to hear you.'

Had I not drunk a considerable amount of champagne I would have refused on principle. Could I even remember them all?

I sat down at an enormous shiny 10-foot Bosendorfer and played the whole set to the candle-lit elite of Salzburg in the hall built for Mozart himself. Ilona came up onto the platform:

'I know that Howard has alwasy intended to write a second book. I'm taking this opportunity to ask him to do so by next summer and to give the premiere in my little festival in Schloss Rosenegg. Wiil you do this for me Howard?'

How could I refuse such a request in front of such an extraordinarily illustrious gathering - an in Mozart's own concert-room! On the other hand, when would I find the time to write it?

Next day I was invited as guest of honour at Dietlinde Maazel's birthday party and place between her and her husband Lorin, music director of the Vienna Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. It transpired that Dietlinde loved my music for The Snowman more than anything in the world and that her father narrated it every Christmas with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. I was most honoured.

Robert and I had done well with The Snowman ballet which had transferred from the Stora Theatre to the new Gothenburg Opera House and run there each Christmas for 3 years. They now proposed to commission 3-act ballet. Robert and I saw the chance at last to create our 'Doktor Faustus', based on the great Thomas Mann novel. We set to work and I made frequent visits to discuss it. Robert and Sheri's flat started to fill with books related to Mann, Faust, magic, Hitler, Germany and all sorts of related topics. But whilst this seemed very exciting to Robert and I, it by no means enchanted Sheri in the same way. I arrived one evening to meet Robert at the Bommen bar opposite the opera house. Robert was in a sad state:

'Sheri wants us to abandon 'Doktor Faustus'. She thinks it's spooky and she thinks the ballet should be about a woman rather than a man. She'd also like to have a starring role in it, since she's heading towards the end of her dance career - and I understand that.'

I was devastated by this having saved up this project for something like 25 years and finally been presented with the most perfect opportunity to do it. We talked at length but Robert was decided, and I suppose to be honest his marriage was at stakek, so strongly do emotions and careers and allegiances entwine in the ballet and theatre worlds.

We completely changed track and Robert camne up with a ballet called 'Eva', described in the eventual programme-note as:

'A ballet about woman. The myth, instinct and tradition she is carrying, her earthbound journey during life and the inheritance she passes on.'

The first act was to be called 'Birthrite' and gave impressions of woman from the ags of the hunter through the ages of myth and paganism, emerging at last towards the present. It needed new music and I composed an act called Fodelserit (Birthrite), for large orchestra including six percussion, with log and skin drums, bull-roarer, bean shaker and jawbone - some very exciting sounds. The second act was called Livets smarta (Life and its troubles) and Robert decided he would like to use existing works of mine - the first movement of the violin concerto; the Adagio from 'A month in the country';a section of the piano quartet orchestrated; and a section of 'Toccata'. The third act would use the slow movement of my violin concerto and Part Three of 'Benedictus' with full SATB chorus added to the orchestra.

On Friday March 8th I conducted a wonderful premiere with the orchestra responding to me magnificently and on returning to the podium after the second interval I received a standing ovation - a fairly unheard of event which thrilled me - but not everybody else. Martin Kingsbury had invited himself over for the weekend and came to my dressing-room at the end of the first act, seemingly delighted. Maggie Rodford my current London agent and her husband were there, as was Sean and Manuela had come from Austria, the film director Graham Baker and his wife Annabelle had come from Suffolk, two old friends David and Esther had arrived unexpectedly from Peckham, South London, and Diahann and her mother had arrived from Uppsala. There was a great reception backstage afterwards and on the Saturday night Robert and Sheri joined with all of us for a dinner party in a splendid harbour-side restaurant. Rather belated snow began to fall.

The dinner was splendidly enjoyable and, mimicking the Swedish way, each of us tapped on a glass, then stood and made a speech. We heard splendid jokes and splendid stories and everybody joined in - except Martin Kingsbury who remained aloof and apparently unamused. Late on in the evening we left the restaurant, Diahann, Robert, Sheri and I in one car and Martin with all the others in a big people-carrier. According to Maggie they had only driven for about half a minute when Kingsbury screamed:

'Let me out! Let me out!'

The people-carrier was now in the middle of a deserted dockland area and thick snow was falling. Maggie remonstrated saying how dangerous this was but Kingsbury was hysterical:

'Let me out now! Right now!'

He had had enough for some reason. Diahann's mother described his behaviour as 'socially handicapped'. Others described it as 'manic'.

On the following Tuesday I mounted the podium at the Opera House for the second performance of 'Eva'. I began to conduct exactly as I had on the first night - but something had gone drastically wrong. The orchestra would not follow me. The first act is totally based on rhythms and percussion and it is vital both for dancers and for the music that the tempi are absolutely correct. But they were not. I tried every trick I knew to get the orchestra, and in particular the percussion, to follow me. They simply refused!

At the end of the act I went backstsge to see the embarassed lead percussionist trying to sneak away from me.

'Why aren't you following my beat?!'

He looked terrified.

'He told me not to follow you! He told me!'

'Who told you?'

'I can't tell you!'

'What do you mean you can't tell me?'

I tried to grab hold of him to stop him running aweay, but he was plainly scared out of his wits. I had to leave it and I had to conduct the rest of the evening. Due to somebody's very deliberate interference the ballet was a virtual flop. Due for eighteen performances it was taken off after four. Another disaster presided over by Faber - plots and subterfuges.

I didn't blame this plot on the opera house and I believe I was right not to, since shortly afterwards they asked if I would like to compose a full-length opera for them. During the run-up to the the premiere people had all been very friendly and on one occasion the editor of the local Gothenburg newspaper had taken Diahann and I for a car-ride out into the beautiful surrounding countryside. We talked about how reasonable property was and how easy it was to fly to and fro to London.

In November 1995 I was music director for a film of A Midsummer Night's Dream being made by the Royal Shakespeare Company film for Channel 4 and directed by Adrian Noble with whom I'd so so much enjoyed working in the eighties. It featured Alex Jennings and Lindsey Duncan and on returning from Gothenburg I started work on the orchestral score. The decor was a highly original design, where the forest consisted of electric light bulbs, and the rumbustious Bottom (played with brilliantly humourous vulgarity by Desmond Barrit) rode in on a vintage motor bike. I characterised this with a raucous trombone solo. The costumes were slightly twenties or thirties and somehow this surreal mixture worked well for me, since I was able to use the music to provide the atmosphere and sounds of a forest and to invest the overall production with the feelins and emotions of the characters. I conducted a scaled-down Philharmonia Orchestra and Mike Ross-Trevor recorded it at Whitfield Street Studios between May 31-June 2nd. For 'Ye spotted snakes'and (Philomel's Lullaby) I used a trio of three superb female voices: Mary Hegarty and Yvonne Howard (sopranos) and Susan Bickley (comtralto).

Diahann reminded me that I still hadn't started on the second book of piano pieces, and that what's more I had agreed to play the first performance in Austria on August 6th! This gave me just under 6 weeks to create it. I decided to use certain existing piano pieces - the Prelude in F minor; The Music Box Lullaby from the film 'The Changeling' in F major; Romanza in B flat minor - and then to make piano arrangements of one or two orchestral pieces - The Dance of the Hunters from Eva in B flat major; The Dance of the Sun and the Moon in E flat minor; then the song 'Isabelle' composed for Isabelle Deschamp's wedding (E flat major); 'Serioso , come una marcia lento' from the Serenade for Wind Octet in A flat minor; 'Jump' from Dances for two piano, in A flat major; 'Walking in the Air' from 'The Snowman' in C sharp minor; 'Night and Day' from the childeren's song-cycle 'The Land of Counterpane'; 'Oberon' from the film I'd just completed (Midsummer Night's Dream') and finally 'Make-believe' from another animated film, 'Granpa'. Thus was born the second book of piano preludes, making a set of 24 in every major and minor key, a work that once completed I christened Lifecycle, since it had taken such a long time to write! The earliest piano piece came from 1956 and the last one from 1996.

I told Martin Kingsbury of the forthcoming first performance of this in Schloss Rosenegg but he seemed uninterested. I was becoming sick to death of FM who seemed to be doing everything in their power to destroy me. I was sick to death of being in London because they were in London. They not only did not promote my work, they used every possible method of bringng it down, with slander and innuendo, the creation of abusive claques at concerts and events, and now finally deliberate sabotage of an opera house performance, right at the highest level of the profession. Why was this ? It was very hard to understand, although much later when I read Frances Stonor Sanders book 'Who pays the piper' the light slowly began to dawn. For me it was unthinkable to leave FM because I had a publishing contract with them and they ran and had control of my catalogue. But they had never got me commissions in an opera house such as this in England and Sweden suddenly seemed to be very interested in me.

It was difficult to leave London completely however, since I had so many musical and business contacts there. Diahann was constantly begging to be with me, but the studio was small for more than one person and I was loth to give up the quietness and concentration I achieved there by being alone. We decided to search for a big house in Sweden. We could live together there and I could fly to London for business when necessary. Our friendly newspaper editor introduced us to an excellent estate agent and we explained what we were looking for.

He came up with several 'finds', two of them fairly moderate in size and one very large: a school-house of 450 square metres, with a huge beech tree dominating a big garden, not far from the airport but very quiet with beautiful views and a nearby lake. It had an enormous school-room which would easily take two or more pianos, another room that would make a superb library and about 6-7 bedrooms. It was somewhat neglected but therefore cheap and well worth spending time and money on to decorate. Both of us fell in love with it on that day and we resolved to move as soon as we reasonably could.

On September 27th we moved into the school house in Ravlanda. We had driven from England with the bare necessities and at the last moment had decided that the double fouton was too big to go in the car. We spent a couple of pretty uncomfortable nights until a vanload of splendid Ikea furniture solved our problems and the move to Sweden and the old school house started a whole new lease of life and of creative energy.

Gabrielle Byam-Grounds was flautist and director of an ensemble called The English Serenata and right at this moment she asked if I would be interested to write her a work for her to play with string quartet. I agreed and she secured a commission from Wolverhampton University. Even before my piano arrived at the house I started to write. The first movement was quite simply a long-drawn-out melody which the flute 'sings' and then elaborates expressively. Like many of my works this theme had been in my head a very long time and I simply wrote it down. The second movement was a scherzo and the 'trio' just 'floated' like snow falling, for this is indeed what happened as I looked out of my windows to distant hills. Sweden and its silence and landscape affected my writing from the very first moment.

Immediately following this I wrote an unaccompanied Motet for St. Margaret's Westminster with the title God be merciful unto us and bless us before going to Birminghamon on 28th November for an even more monumental version of Let music live!. Sir Simon Rattle conducted it in The Symphony Hall with no less than 2,500 performers.

The opera house orchestra were meanwhile offerring to do a concert of my orchestral music, but in the event they weren't prepared and they offerred me instead a piano recital of my new work 'Lifecycle, 24 pieces for Piano'. Both Ilona and Diahann had insisted I finish it that summer and I had duly given a first performance in the castle as planned - quite a small and intimate event which I was keen to try out again in a bigger space. I was offerred the new recital room of the Opera and a brand new Steinway, which seemed splendid. I had some qualms about doing it since I had only about two weeks to practise and I intended doing it from memory. I was fine through the first 22 pieces and forgot any qualms. But no. 23 'Oberon' is technically difficult and about half way through something in my back clicked. I wouldn't stop but continued to the end in extreme discomfort and next morning I woke unable to move as much as a millimetre. I had dislocated a vertebra, I had a frozen shoulder and I had a tennis elbow. I had no idea that playing the piano could cause such extreme pain!

Robert Matthew Walker was later to describe the work as follows:

Lifecycle is a brilliantly conceived piano cycle of ‘imagination and reflection’, combining teaching pieces (the Chaconne and Toccatina are now in the Associated Board’s Diploma syllabus) with recital works ranging from the uncompromising technical demands of Scherzo and Oberon, to the outstandingly sublime yet musically powerful Prelude and Nocturne.

Blake conceived the idea for Lifecycle, a sequence of 24 pieces for the piano, after a conversation with world-renowned pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy in 1962 and dedicates the cycle to this wonderful musician. Although 24 works in the set, it is not a set of Preludes as written by Chopin, Scriabin and Rachmaninov, but there does appear within the cycle one piece in each of the 12 major and 12 minor chromatic keys.

On the day I gave its professional debut in Gothenburg Opera House I rather wished I hadn't written it at all!

1997 started very painfully since I could hardly move. I tried various osteopathic practitioners without success until I was recommended to a blind doctor at the Hale Clinic in London. He rummaged amongst my bones for some considerable time then told me to stand.

'Stretch with all your might. Stretch up amd right back and down. Stretch..come on with all your might!...'

Suddenly a great scrunch and I was back to normal. My piano- playing days were not over after all!

A miracle. And a new commission from Chester Bach Singers to celebrate it. I chose a text of Edith Sitwell, perhaps her most famous poem: 'Still falls the rain' for solo treble, chorus and organ to be sung in Chester Cathedral. Her son came to see me, an advertising man from Notting Hill. He wondered if 'Facade' could be re-written and modernised. I explained that I thought Walton's score was a masterpiece and in my opinion it should be left well alone.

Next a bear-shaped sequel to 'The Snowman' presented itself. John Coates had contacted me after more then ten years. He wanted me to forgive him for the shenanigans on 'Granpa'. Raymond Briggs had drawn a new book and Channel 4 were eager to have a new animated film. They insisted I did the score. Would I do it? I looked at the book which was smothered in dialogue which is not Raymond's forte. The drawings of course were divine and the story of a little girl keeping a polar bear in her bedroom was cute and cranky. I said I'd compose the score providing there were no words in the film, like 'The Snowman'. Everybody agreed and I started work on 'The Bear' spotting it on March 11-15. What I didn't know at that point was that Harvey Weinstein (which also meant Miramax and Disney) were involved and that became the seismic fault in the pyramid. The first piano score was complete by April 17th and a revised version by May 15th. As with Granpa I took a hand in the script and story. I felt strongly that the episode of the little girl skating down a frozen Thames with The Bear and The Star-Bear acompanying gher was by far the most magical sequence. It had been dropped for some ludicrous 'health and safety' reason. It was puit baklc and I now felt it would be a great place for a song. However as before John did his best to temper its success - he did NOT want another 'Walking in the Air'. This may seem strange to understand but in his view the film was the thing to watch and the music must not 'steal his thunder'- even though Channel 4 clearly wanted such a thing to happen! I also suggested the scene of a merchant ship cutting its way through the ice and The Bear rescuing Tilly. I had a musical skating theme but didn't think about lyrics or a singer until the animation was assembled and I'd completed the orchestration the following January.

When we got to the point John had a change of heart. A song might be a good idea after all. He suggested a lyric that said 'maybe everybody has a star that shines only for them'. Not the first time it's been thought of but it would suit the film perhaps. I wrote the song 'Somewhere a star shines for everyone' to be sung first as Tilly skates down the frozen Thames accompanied by the Star-Bear from the skies and the Polar-Bear from the North Pole. We needed a girl singer to record it and I rang Roxy Bellamy at Sony Classical. She said: 'We've just signed a 12-year old girl called Charlotte Church. We'll send a demo over.' She recorded it beautifully, at the same time forming a substantial part of a one-hour documentary on the making of the film. Unfortunately, when it came to dub the song onto the lovely skating scene, John insisted there should be no words and the film was released at Christmas with la la la, la la la, la la laaa.. Worse was to come because when Sony enthusiastically rushed round to see us with a similar record deal as the Snowman had enjoyed, the rpoducers, John Coates and Paul Madden refused point-blank. For this reason there has never been an album of 'The Bear' - or much of a success. I should have known better than to work with John again. I said to myself: 'Never, never again.' Whilst I was working on this John Stalker rang from Birmingham Rep to say that they wanted to put on The Snowman Stage Show again for a Christmas season. I was delighted but I had a major proviso: I wanted Robert North to bring his own brilliant choreography to the show and cooperate with myself and director Bill Alexander. It was amicably agreed and when rehearsal started in the Autumn the three of us worked wonderfully and delightedly together. New scenes and music revisions appeared and the show moved forward into its second incarnation opening at The Rep to huge acclaim. Neil Mundy o