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Who or what inspired you to take up composing, and pursue a career in music?

At 18 I was planning to go to Oxford to read history when I unexpectedly won a 3-year piano scholarship to the Royal Academy. On producing some ‘written work’ at my first interview, the Warden suggested I should also study composition

Who or what were the most significant influences on your musical life and career as a composer?

Everything I ever heard but all in different degrees and for different reasons. Schubert, Bartok, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Copland, Bach, Brubeck, Mozart. Handel, Puccini, Rachmaninov, Elgar, Delius , Warlock, Moeran, Butterworth, Franck, ,Orff, Prokofiev, Henry Mancini, Quincy Jones, Bernard Herrmann, Bernstein, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Gershwin, Malcom Arnold, Skryabin

What have been the greatest challenges/frustrations of your career so far?

In 1967 stopping my life as a pianist in order to take over composing/conducting ‘The Avengers’.

In 1971 abandoning a highly lucrative commercial career, not to mention a house in Knightsbridge and my first wife (!) in order to start again and learn to write much better music in the country (Sussex).

In 1981 abandoning a Hollywood contract in order to return to UK to finish my dramatic oratorio ‘Benedictus’, (which I consider my masterpiece) , although had I not done so I would not have then  been in London  to compose The Snowman!

Worst disaster for me professionally for me was in 1998 when my publishers issued a high court writ against me in an attempt to steal all of my music. It involved so many people I had trusted and been happy with and I was let down by them. This took me a very long time to recover from and the fact that they issued the writ on the day my son Robert was born was malicious! .In fact I fought the case and won, but it does illustrate ‘the price of fame in no uncertain way’. My frustrations and sadnesses have most often sprung from people’s envy of my success, which I find very difficult to deal with.

What are the special challenges/pleasures of working on a commissioned piece?

Everything one creates is a challenge whether one gets commissioned for it or not. I have 705 opuses listed but these include many false starts and rejects and disappointments. However a very great percentage were commissioned, sometimes quite handsomely, sometimes for nothing, but always because somebody really wanted me to write something for them. One needs to have a performance  to aim at and that won’t happen without an enthusiastic commissioner, nearly always just one person. For instance I remember the head of the Leeds Arts Council saying to me at a reception after the Paralympics: ‘Could you write the sort of violin concerto that would make everybody cheer at the end?’ I started immediately!

What are the special challenges/pleasures of working with particular musicians, singers, ensembles and orchestras?

I always write with a soloist or a group or an orchestra in mind., because I ‘hear’ their sound as I write and often have a sort of ‘conversation’ with the player. For instance when Thea King commissioned a clarinet concerto I knew how much she  loved playing in the low chalumeau register but was not at all so keen on screechy high notes. I wrote for her accordingly and could always hear her playing it.. I would find myself murmuring during the composition process: ‘Oh, she’ll like that!’

Of which works are you most proud?

‘Benedictus’, The Snowman Stage Show, The Piano Quartet, ‘Diversions for cello’, ‘Speech after Long Silence’,  ‘Sleepwalking’,  ‘Elegia Stravagante’, ‘The Bear’, ‘Granpa’, The Flute Concerto,  The Clarinet Concerto,  The Violin Concerto, ‘The Duellists’  ‘A Month in the Country’.

How would you characterise your compositional language? 

Gapplegate Review USA 2015 wrote the following which  is very much how I’d like to be thought of, though am rather too embarrassed to express!

An English composer with a pronounced lyrical gift, In his latest album of works for cello and piano ‘Diversions’ the music is of a pronounced tonality but without anything in the way of a neo-classical glance at the past. The works hold their own as contemporary music with a pronounced Blakean signature affixed and the music is filled with inventive flourishes that evince a fertile creative mind at work. It is rousingly good music. It is not high modernist but it is thoroughly contemporary. It has a special quality to it that belongs very much to the musical personality of Howard Blake

How do you work?

I both live and work in a top-floor apartment consisting of two converted Victorian artist studios near Kensington Gardens. The studios are on two levels with balconies. In one there is a Steinway grand piano, a desk, a PC and audio equipment. This is my business office and Anna my PA sits opposite me when we do the accounts and correspondence on Tuesday mornings. Upstairs is a second PC housing a Sibelius music writing system attached to a Yamaha electric keyboard. These are linked to a state of the art Konica Minolta printer from which I can print and publish my own actual sheet music, or place it on my website to be downloaded by musician players or by the public. I write music when it comes into my head, which can be at 3.00am or 12 noon or midnight. I have to write ideas down as they come to me which I am told makes me a very difficult person to live with! But I shouldn’t exaggerate this too much. Mostly I wake early around 7am have breakfast and start working like everybody else. I usually work till about 3pm and then go and have some late lunch. I may have a nap and then start working again or in the evening go out to a concert.  Aside from travelling , I’ve lived like this more or less since 1981 when I bought the studio.

Who are your favourite musicians/composers?

My cellist friend Benedict Kloeckner who now has his own International Music Festival in Coblenz. My great pianist and conductor friend Vladimir Ashkenazy who commissioned ‘Speech after long silence’ and recorded my piano music. My brilliant conductor friend John Wilson who was my protege in the nineties, currently conducting Porgy and Bess [at ENO]. Wayne Marshall with whom I performed concerts of my two –piano music with duo improvisations plus Rachmaninov. Fabulous Norwegian young violist Eivind Ringstad who is demanding a concerto from me. William Chen, professor of piano at Shanghai Conservatory, who made the first recording  of ‘Lifecycle’. Andrew Marriner, principal clarinet in LSO who introduced me to his father Sir Neville Marriner with whom we both recorded with the wonderful Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, not to mention Peter Auty, Aled Jones, Katherine Jenkins, Patricia Rozario, Madeleine Mitchell, Sasha Grynyuk and many many others

As a musician, what is your definition of success

When the public want to hear or play your music

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

A musician must consider how he can most effectively serve the art of music, whether as a soloist or a member of an orchestra or a singer in a choir or a manager of music business. One should only go into a professional music life if one really loves music more than anything else in one’s life. Many become disgruntled when they cannot rise to the heights of virtuoso soloists, but many many others are happy to be one member in an orchestra, or a chamber group or play jazz or rock or electronic or who knows what?  There is a multitude of possibilities!  Every type of music has its own character and its own particular value in eternity. I often quote my name-sake William Blake: “Eternity is in love with the productions of time”

Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time?

Here

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Being well and healthy and able to work and create whilst still having time for friends and family

What is your most treasured possession?

My children and good health

What do you enjoy doing most?

Composing and performing my music with people who love it.


Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians states that ‘Howard Blake has achieved fame as pianist, conductor and composer.’ He grew up in Brighton, at 18 winning a scholarship to The Royal Academy of Music where he studied piano with Harold Craxton and composition with Howard Ferguson. In the early part of an intensely active career he wrote numerous film scores, including ‘The Duellists’ with Ridley Scott which gained the Special Jury Award at the Cannes Festival, ‘A Month in the Country’ which gained him the British Film Institute Anthony Asquith Award for musical excellence, and ‘The Snowman’, nominated for an Oscar after its first screening. His famous song ‘Walking in the Air’ was the chart success that launched Aled Jones in 1985, whilst the concert version for narrator and orchestra is performed world-wide and the full-length ballet for Sadler’s Wells runs for a season every year in London. Concert works include the Piano Concerto commissioned for Princess Diana, the Violin Concerto commissioned for the City of Leeds; the Clarinet Concerto commissioned by Thea King and the English Chamber Orchestra and large-scale choral/orchestral works such as ‘Benedictus’ and ‘The Passion of Mary’ both recorded with the RPO. He is increasingly adding to his catalogue of CDs which includes Sir Neville Marriner conducting the woodwind concertos with The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and ‘Walking in the Air’ – the piano music of Howard Blake – recorded by Vladimir Ashkenazy. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in 1988 and received the OBE for services to music from the Queen in 1994.

Read Howard Blake’s full biography

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I’ve always loved the ceremony of nine lessons and carols from the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge. For me, someone who doesn’t really “do Christmas”, the opening notes of Once in Royal David’s City signal the start of Christmas.

The Christmas “music” which fills shops, cafes and other spaces in the run up to the festive season is mostly trite and trashy with irritatingly catchy tunes which quickly become an unshakeable earworm.

Christmas carols are, however, another kind of music, in a special, much-loved league of their own. Aside from the poetry of their texts, there are the lovely memorable melodies (some carols such as In the Bleak Midwinter have several versions) and rich harmonies, often underpinned by wonderful organ playing. I’m not a churchgoer, but I do love the music of the Christmas festival.

51pfArkvBxLWhen I was at secondary school in the early 1980s (a large state comprehensive school in Hertfordshire), we always performed Handel’s Messiah at Christmas and a few days later had our own ceremony of nine lessons and carols, performed in the church next door to the school by the senior choir and orchestra, pupils and staff (the Headmaster always read the final lesson, booming “IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD…!” at us in stentorian tones). In addition to traditional carols (marked “All” in the service sheet), we sang other Christmas songs, many of which were taken from ‘Carols for Choirs’ (my particular favourites were Adam Lay YBounden (Boris Ord’s version) and Torches by John Joubert). I loved singing in the choir and playing in the orchestra, with that special sense of common purpose and a shared enjoyment and excitement in the music we were performing.

At the time, the huge amount of music which went on in my school was taken for granted. The school prided itself on its music provision and I remember this was one of the main factors which influenced my parents’ decision in applying to the school – and I’m very glad they did. The music department was run by an energetic and hugely committed teacher, (whose enthusiastic teaching inspired me, in part, when I became a piano teacher, and who retired only a few years ago). As well as two choirs and orchestras, a madrigal choir, recorder group and various other smaller ensembles, there was plenty of provision for instrumental lessons (I learnt the clarinet so that I could join the senior orchestra), plus opportunities to go on European tours with the orchestra or sing at the Royal Albert Hall (as I did when I was about 15).

Looking back, I now realise that I was very privileged to have access to and be surrounded by so much music at school, and also at home, and to be encouraged in my love and practice of music by inspiring music teachers and supportive parents. Music was very much a part of my day-to-day life and I never considered it particularly special or privileged (though I was teased a lot at school for being “good at music”). With the serious erosion of music provision in our state schools, what I enjoyed in my teens is now very much the preserve of a comfortable middle-class upbringing, and music and music lessons are in danger of becoming the exclusive preserve of the better off.

The benefits of learning a musical instrument are well-documented and I have observed and experienced many of them at close quarters through my teaching and my own studies when I returned to piano lessons as an adult. Learning a musical instrument equips us with important life-skills. If you can perform in a student or school concert or a public music festival, you can also stand up before a room of people and give a paper at a conference. Music stimulates brain function and can improve memory, cognitive and motor skills, concentration, time management and organizational skills, and creative thinking. Playing an instrument is both stimulating and therapeutic, as the physical activity of playing releases the same “happy hormones” (endorphins) which sportspeople enjoy. Learning and playing a musical instrument fosters self-expression, and can bring a deep sense of fulfillment and personal achievement. Meanwhile, playing in an ensemble, orchestra or band, or singing in a choir, offers a wonderful sense of a shared experience while also encouraging team building, sociability and cooperation. For children with special needs or learning difficulties such as dyslexia and ADHD, music can offer an important outlet and allow them to shine when they may be struggling in other areas of their school life.

We need music, and we need committed, skilled and enthusiastic people to encourage and train the next generation of musicians and to foster an appreciation of and excitement in music, whatever the genre. The devaluing of music, along with the other arts, by former education secretary Michael Gove and continued by the current encumbent and this philisitine government in general, is an outrageous attack on a crucial aspect of our cultural landscape and heritage. Music and arts education is simply not safe in this government’s hands.

We need music. Support music in schools, music hubs, local ensembles, national orchestras. Encourage your children to learn music, sing in a choir, join a band, form their own band, go to concerts, talk to musicians. Write to your MP and urge him or her to take music education seriously. Listen, engage, and above all enjoy. Please.

Carols from Kings – BBC Radio 4

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For those of us who engage in music, as performers and teachers, the classical canon offers an endless source of excitement, thrilling stories and fantasies, portrayed in myriad colours, moods and styles. The desire to play this music and revel in its wonders is very potent and is what motivates us to practise, play, perform, and teach, and sharing the music with others is a special joy all of its own.

But alongside this, the musician’s daily life can be tough, restrictive and lonely: the routine of practising, trying to make a living in an uncertain, highly competitive profession, seeking out performance opportunities, travelling, teaching, and the quotidian admin of managing a career. When the creative pursuit of music feels more like a task than a passion, it can lead to a loss of joy.

There are added pressures too: the rigours of the musician’s training can affect one’s attitude to the music. It stops being a source of excitement and exploration and instead becomes a sequence of technical exercises to be practised with clinical precision to the point of perfection.  The need always to be at the top of one’s game, the knowledge that, as a performer, one is only as good as one’s last performance, the precarious nature of the profession – all these can impact on one’s attitude to the music.

How do we preserve the joy when so many pressures can conspire to remove it from our music making?

As a teacher, I think it should start in the earliest lessons. Too often children are encouraged not to make a mistake, to aim for perfection – an unrealistic artificial construct – and in doing so become fixated on avoiding errors rather than revelling in the pleasure of the music, relishing and cherishing the sounds they are making.

…too much emphasis is placed on how they [music students] perform, and too little on what they experience.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of FLOW

 

Embrace the experience

As we mature and develop as musicians, whether or not we choose the path of formal training in conservatoire, our focus should remain on “the experience”. Of course we must practise deeply and intelligently, with due care and attention, but not to the exclusion of everything else. Life experience, from the mundane to the extraordinary, all feeds the artistic temperament and brings vitality and imagination to our music making.

Make the music for you and remain curious

Intrinsic motivation – whereby one undertakes a task or activity for its own sake rather than in the hope of gaining some sort of external reward or praise – leads to better focus and concentration, and far more fulfilling outcomes. So make the music for you – and don’t continually seek praise or endorsement from others; nor compare yourself to others.

Thirst for knowledge is a form of intrinsic motivation and this thirst can be fulfilled by learning new music and enjoying the process of learning. Personal fulfilment can be derived from knowing one is getting better, while the physical and mental satisfaction of actually playing music is a pleasure in itself and can lead to a state of flow, where one enjoys the activity for its own sake.

Regular reminders of why we have chosen to devote ourselves to music, which focus on the intrinsic motivations, rather than career advancement or external endorsement, and recalling our love for and pleasure in the art form, are very important too.

Give yourself permission for downtime

Taking regular breaks from practising and the other minutiae of managing one’s career allows time to refocus and reset. Regular exercise, plenty of sleep, having someone help with the mundane tasks, and getting away from it all by doing something else – reading a book, visiting an exhibition or simply chilling with a TV programme.

Acceptance

Know and accept that feelings of frustration and disgruntlement with one’s working life as normal and common to everyone.

 

And some helpful advice from musicians themselves:

Finding a few minutes amongst the (often huge) stresses of deadlines to engage in ‘play’/procrastination…and lots of listening to all kinds of music.

Thomas Hewitt Jones, composer

 

Reflect regularly on the transience of stress and anxiety and the permanence of art. Treat it as your friend, not your enemy. Even if things get much worse and they always can, know that art will always be with you and will continue long after you’re gone. A thirst for life and creation when willed into being tends to overwhelm the desire for death (of one form or another).

Luke Jones, pianist

 

For me, playing is the release. I mostly compose via improvisations, so as my mind wanders and deals with daily stress, my music is moving around under my fingers looking for a way to ground myself.

Simon Reich, pianist and composer

 

at times when my work is not bringing new repertoire to me, I find there is no cure for fatigue that is better than making a new thing

Sally Whitwell, pianist and composer

 

For me the joy is in the music. I love music.

Joseph Fleetwood, pianist

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It’s been an interesting and busy year, marked in May by my move from London, my home for 30+ years, to a quiet corner of Dorset – the isle of Portland on the striking Jurassic Coast. Leaving London and its vibrant culture, not least a wealth of classical music which I have much enjoyed, might have felt like a huge wrench, but in fact I don’t miss the big city, and I am already discovering plenty of music here in Dorset.

In addition to allowing me to muse on things musical, the blog keeps me in touch with a large community of people, some of whom have become good friends in real life, and this has undoubtedly prevented me from feeling at all lonely or isolated here in Portland. In a way, I enjoy the best of several worlds: we live in a light-filled modern house, far bigger than anything we could have afforded in London, with views over Chesil Beach and the sea, and fantastic Turner-esque sunsets in the evening. My son lives in a flat in SW London, which means I can still visit to see friends and enjoy concerts and other cultural highlights, before retreatng once again to a place whose quiet and slower pace of life are very conducive to writing and piano practise.

People regularly ask me how I continue to produce so much “content” (an on-trend word for articles/writing). The truth is that I love music and I love writing about music and sharing my passion. Articles are inspired by encounters and conversations with other musicians and writers, concerts I’ve enjoyed, things I’ve heard on the radio, and much, much more….and while that inspiration remains, so the blog will continue (it will celebrate its 10th birthday in July 2020).

A big thank you to all my readers, followers, guest contributors and wonderful Meet the Artist interviewees, all of whom make the blog so interesting and varied.

Wishing you a very happy and music-filled 2019