THE SNOWMAN FULL CONCERT VERSION FOR STRING QUARTET (WITH NARRATION OR FILM) op.612 (March 2010)

Howard Blake writes: 'On August 23rd. 2021, Jonathan Manners, director of The BBC Singers, contacted me to ask if I would give my approval to a new arrangement of the complete soundtrack that I originally composed for the 1982, 26-minute animated film 'The Snowman' (op. 310) and for the follow-up CBS-Masterworks album 'The Snowman' for boy soloist, orchestra and narrator (1983 op.323). Jonathan's wish was to turn the work into a 'vocalise'- that is to say a piece of music to be performed by singers only. I had made such an arrangement of the main theme 'Walking in the air' in 2019 and conducted a performance with the choir of St Albans Cathedral with tenor Peter Auty, who back in 1982 had been the original marvellous treble soloist on the world-famous recording of this song. This new 2019 a cappella arrangement of 'Walking in the air' had sounded wonderful and might well have suggested the notion of further development. Jonathan told me that he had also studied my later arrangement of 'The Snowman' for string quartet and narrator (opus 612, 2015) and thought that this scoring for four instruments might somehow be employed in the proposed work, which would be a huge a cappella (unaccompanied) 'vocalise' sung to la,la,la or hummed or even whistled! Whilst not wishing to embark on such an arrangement myself, I gave Jonathan permission to experiment with this idea but expressed the doubt that all the musical features of the score could be thus voiced and suspected Jonathan would have to employ other instruments along with the choir. This turned out to be true and it was then decided that the a cappella arrangement of 'Walking in the air' made for Peter Auty and as heard in  St. Albans Cathedral in 2019 should be used exactly as I had written it, whilst the remaining music would be used in the wordless (a cappella) arrangement just made by Jonathan Manners for the occasion. In this revised form, Chester Music (Wise Music) my publishers of 'The Snowman', have given permission for the completed work to be scheduled for broadcast performance or performances with a celebrity narrator at Christmas 2021 (times to be announced.)