Snowman autobiography Walking In The Air Can Be Dangerous op.428 (June 1991)

My great-grandfather on my mother's side was Henry Andrews, born in 1832, 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 the violin and the piano.

She married Leeder, 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, bravado and ostentation, Grace, perhaps by way of reaction, was immensely timid and self-deprecating. In early 1914 at the age of 17 she was invited to join the prestigious Queen's Hall Orchestra, a most wonderful opportunity; but she was too shy to accept.

If only she had.

With the outbreak of the 1914-18 war shortly afterwards the boys whom she had grown up with were prime officer material, eager to join up. Most of them never returned.

At the age of fifty Leeder died of a heart attack whilst cranking a car next to the Hugh Middleton statue on Islington Green and her highly unpredictable mother sold the business, acquired a new husband and went to live in the South of France. Grace was left to fend for herself and this sudden disintegration of her much-loved home was a huge loss and an appalling shock. Years later 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, The Biograph on the corner showing silent films with a piano, going to the nearby Union Chapel on Sundays when her father would wear a silk top hat and walk arm in arm with her mother, the four children marching in column behind them, a maid and errand-boy bringing up the rear.

Her cousin, Dora Rowse, became a fine pianist and teacher whose husband played the organ at the Alexandra Palace: her cousin Mary became an actress in the Frank Benson Company at Stratford, once playing Celia to Tallulah Bankhead's Rosalind. She was to marry Jack Bligh, the first English film stunt-man and Charlie Chaplin's great friend. She wrote novels, founded a theatre company and was an early broadcaster. Her cousin Ivan in Muswell Hill gained a BSc at 19, a PhD at 22 and was to pioneer diesel technology: an inventor. He also had the musical gene, playing excellent Bach on the piano as a hobby and visiting Bruges when on holiday to play the carillon, at which he was expert. Soon most of these interesting, amusing and cultured people would cease to be part of Grace's life.

She had taken the advice of her parents to gain a business diploma at Clark's College and with this she obtained a good civil service job in the Accountant General's office of the GPO. She was befriended by the formidable office superintendent, Constance White. Constance and her sister Elsie were seriously committed Plymouth Brethren. After a while Grace took lodgings in Ealing near where they lived, went to all the meetings with them and gradually became totally immersed in this narrowest of all narrow religions. Constance and Elsie loved 'little Gracie' and took her everywhere with them. The shock of her family's sudden disintegration and the apparently callous behaviour of her mother may well have assisted her descent into this total change of belief pattern. She had lost her home and family but found another with the brethren.

Plymouth Brethren hold the strictest of puritanical outlooks. They believe one should only pursue that which is 'profitable in the sight of God', that your 'yea' should 'yea' and your 'nay' should be 'nay' - to lie to anyone is to lie to God, and God will punish you for it. They don't believe in unprofitable pastimes like the cinema, or romantic novels, or the theatre, or dancing, or (god forbid!) dating or love songs or the playing of music generally - unless it is the simplest of hymns, sung purely to the glory of God - hymns appallingly sentimental and vulgar and just plain bad, mostly written by someone called Sankey. For my mother to have to play and sing such stuff after an upbringing in classical music and with an enlightened education must have been pretty hard to take. But take it she did, swallowed it whole, and one day, when the brethren introduced her to a most devout and serious young preacher whom it was clear that they enormously admired, she had lost any rational defence system that might have given her pause.

Horace Claude Blake also worked in the Post Office and also attended the White sisters meetings, sometimes preaching. He met Grace there and took lodgings in Ealing, starting to wait at the underground station and travel into work with her. He explained his beliefs with force and fervour and they started going to the meetings together, until one day he proposed to her on the platform at Ealing Broadway. He explained that he had ceaselessly prayed for God to give him guidance and God had answered him. God had told him that he should marry Grace Benson. She was the partner ordained by the Lord. As my mother explained to me many years later, she felt she had no choice. How could she go against God? She didn't love him, in fact she didn't much like him, and her well-spoken middle-class family in Muswell Hill would probably think him 'common'.

They most certainly did, and once he'd married her many of them severed connections. 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 Emily, who I'd never met or 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 did and that I was a musician and composer despite my background. My father had to them been utterly 'beyond the pale' and Grace had had to manage without them.

Horace had grown up in the seaside town of Broadstairs in Kent, his father devoting his life solely to God by being the leader of a sect of the brethren. He gained a meagre living by acting as male nurse to old respected brethren members. Bible reading began at breakfast when after the grace each family member must read a passage from the bible, passed solemnly around. (One had to also invent prayers and later when I had to do this with them found it unbearably embarassing.) His wife had given him six children which kept her busy whilst also running the 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 very succesful Harley Street surgeon, keeping as far away from his roots as possible and marrying Lady French, daughter of Field Marshall Sir John French, Baron Ypres - a very considerable social step upwards.

Edie, Daisy, Bess, Olive and Horace remained in the fold. Horace had only four years of education from seven to twelve but made the best use of it, at the end of his life still quoting the funeral oration from Julius Caesar, adept at multiplication and division, and able to sight-read hymn tunes using the tonic solfa method. He was never taught music but had a good ear, playing hymns on the piano but using the black notes only- everything in F sharp major! He remembered the local school fondly, freer in spirit than his home. At twelve he started working as a telegram boy at one farthing each delivered and giving a third to his family. Like all PBs he was highly respectful and hard-working and this with the help of evening classes gained him a place first at the post-office counter, then at the telegraph office in Broadstairs, where one of the things he did was to learn the Morse code.

Soon after the outbreak of the war he was conscripted by the army but refused to report for duty as ordered. 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 in the front line but without the protection afforded by carrying a gun. He agreed to this and was sent off to Ypres in Belgium as a private in the Sappers, detailed first to lay cables in 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 so much as a bramble-scratch. Later, when it was discovered that he was good at Morse he was moved to the interception of enemy messages and was found to be useful. He discovered there were Brethren in Belgium too and when not on the front line went to meetings in Roubaix, conducted in either Flemish or French, of which he learnt enough to particpate in services . Returning to England after the war he was taken on by the Central Telegraph Office in London and took lodgings in Canonbury.

It is a curious anomaly. Whereas my aunt Lady Valerie was ashamed of her father's role as supreme commander,the family was proud of my father's courageous stand against war regardless of the consequences.

My parents married in 1927 when Grace was thirty, considered then quite old to start a family, although it wasn't immediately clear that Horace wanted to start a family. He was monumentally energetic in his work, his self-advancement and his evangelism. They moved to Enfield where a distant relative had offerred to purpose-build a house at 223 Southbury Road. Horace commuted to Central London, worked a five and a half day week, took endless evening classes and, in whatever spare time there was, he and Grace ran an organisation called Brigadier Hall, a charity for poor London children to whom they taught the Bible and fed tea and buns, organising swimming galas and taking them on holidays to Southend or Clacton.

Grace gave up her job and kept house. There was an upright piano, and her violin that was kept in a cupboard because Horace forbade her to play it, or to play anything on the piano but hymns. Her brothers and sisters did sometimes visit but on the whole their life revolved around the Brethren. My mother was gentle, quiet, humourous, endlessly long-suffering, very musical and very shy. She did not know how to stand up to her husband in any way.

A charming exception to this forbidding lifestyle was provided by a shrewd initiative on the part of my grandmother, now attending the English Church in Nice. The Vicar was charmed by her and when approached by a Mme.Peters who had a daughter of about my mother's age most keen to visit England suggested she might be able to stay with Mrs Cotching's daughter and son-in-law in Enfield. Mademoiselle Peters duly arrived and she and my mother got on famously. Very possibly they discussed the idea of having children, for Mademoiselle Peters was soon to get married and in 1934 have a son, Jean-Claude: my mother, after seven years with no sign of any children, suddenly took medical advice resulting in the birth of my brother Philip a year later. At the end of the war they wrote to discover if each had survived and it was agreed that as soon as the boys were old enough they would exchange visits.

Since our parents were so radically steeped in the Judaeo-Christian bible I often wondered why we were not given biblical names, like Luke or Mark or Daniel or Joseph. Why Howard? Why Philip? Only recently it dawned on me ominously that his initials could have been PB for Plymouth Brother. (Much later the P was changed even more ominously to a Z.) 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 three years later on October 28th 1938, becoming the third male Scorpio in the house - three stings in three tails. 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 two sons. Where Philip was clever, rational and serious, I was instinctive, imaginative, 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 was to cause a 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 I have no memory of ever falling out with her. She was so musical, so quiet, so humorous, so true - it would prove hard to find such another.

In the seventies I developed an interest in astrology, and 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, once a girl-friend 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?

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 whatsoever. We would live 'twixt the sea and the 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 and save money. My brother and I were enrolled in Ditchling Road Primary School at the top of the hill and the choir at Saint Augustine's Church a short way up.

Bartholomew Hales had just taken on the post of organist and choirmaster. 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. After several years I summoned up courage to ask if I could try to play it:

'After choir practise on Friday'.

No surprise, no reaction, no expression. What did it mean?

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 aged about 12 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 suddenly and died. 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'.

This upset me quite a lot, first of all because I couldn't see how it was possible to be both Christian and pagan at the same time, and secondly because he'd never invited me to join!

At the Preston School of Music I struggled through early theory exercises with Bonney Churcher, but used to improvise a lot on the piano, mostly in the key of D. I also started to write down short songs and pieces at home, first on birthday or Christmas cards for the family and then for myself to play. At about ten I seemed to strike some sort of seam and 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 him 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'

(He called everybody sonny because he couldn't remember anyone's name.)

'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 big textbook, Percy Buck's 'Practical Harmony',and was as good as his word as we worked through 6/4 chords, suspensions, plagal and interrupted cadences, the Neapolitan sixth, the diminished seventh. 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 infuriating complexities of subject and coutersubject, augmentation and diminution, pedal and stretto. Then one day I went to see him and he was suddenly thin and pale and very grey. He presented me with his very own, much-cherished volume of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues.

'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 48 which I still have beside the piano, not realising that I wouldn't see him again.

This idyllic year came to an end with the 11-plus. Nearly all of 4A 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 black-gowned masters of BGS knew nothing of glorious Dickie Webb and his boundless enthusiasm for the individual soul. They believed in tradition, discipline, law and order, the armed services and above all in games of the team variety. They had no orchestra and a single music master, Albert Chapman, whose carefully-cultivated resemblance to Beethoven in his prime was perhaps the characteristic most in common. That is most unkind of me to say for he had a very good heart and gave me every encouragement he could, but the piano lessons with him didn't take my playing significantly further.

A yearly performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera was a school tradition, but apart from this the only musical events in the school's calendar were Albert's Monday morning 20-minute gramaphone recitals of safe popular classics, the annual inter-house music competition and a very occasional visit by musicians. I only remember one, when the McNaughten string quartet came and played Debussy and Kodaly - a luscious musical oasis in a cultural desert.

There were no concerts, no recitals, no bands, no jazz, no plays, no dancing. The much-admired motto of the school was

'Absque labore nihil' (Without work nothing).

On my first Wednesday at this forbidding establishment Albert took us for class music and asked if any of us sang in a choir. Those of us who did were asked to sing a scale, mostly up to an F.

The Misses Guille, two ladies from Guernsey who had occupied the ground floor of our house for the duration of the war, had at last returned home, giving us a lot more room. This meant that I moved up to a big attic room where no one could hear me and before I went to sleep I used to sing at the top of my voice. It amused me to see just how high I could go. When my turn came I sang a scale of 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 almost twice as big as me. I was 4feet 9inches high. I sight-read the songs and got the part. Never, 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 which mounted alongside the railway. There were small terraced houses on one side and a gigantic concrete wall on the other. It was in fact 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 and ran and sang 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 to Ardingly College 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, and 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 Rosebud were heightened by a difference of more than a head and shoulders between them.'

DAVID SHAW

There had been a third contender for my role:

'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 instead became a friend and 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 'Shaw's Stores', 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 sort of trance he walks up to the huge 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 English-ness that gives one an eternal yearning for trees and water and the countryside. Soon afterwards I heard 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 cause me to buy a ramshackle but 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 Scharzkopf, 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' 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 - far nearer the extrovert world of Hollywood than the inner world of the soul.

MUSICAL BRIGHTON

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 sing a solo with them -Handel's 'Art thou troubled?' or Bach's 'Let the bright seraphim' or perhaps 'Count your blessings one by one.'

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.'

A year or so later 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!'

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.

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 Hewart, 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.

('http://www.bernardherrmann.org/articles/interviews/herrmann001/)

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.

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.'

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 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.

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.

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?

I completed the orchestration a year later and 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?

Ken Essex was the one member of my piano quartet for whom I had not written a solo piece, although he'd repeatedly asked me.

'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. '

Film producer Gerry Potterton came 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 he 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 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.

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!

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.

At Stanley Myers' studio in Redcliffe Road one morning we were mulling over THE PROBLEM - why is the attitude of the contemporary classical music establishment set in concrete? Stanley said:

'It's simply that Schoenberg made a cosmic blunder'.

It made us laugh.

'Perhaps one should write a Socratic dialogue?'

'Why don't you?'

'Schoenberg, Webern and Berg stand like three bollards at the end of a one-way street'.

'Exactly.'

(Copyright Howard Blake 1986)

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 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 dreamt of a counter-melody set against it, but unbelievably high up. I wrote it down for 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. All the big pianists are engaged years in advance and don't have time to learn new works, or that's how the story runs. Rodney says that 'the boys all say you could play it yourself'. 'Boys' being the members of The Philharmonia. I consider 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 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.