Howard Blake

Summary

‘I’ve always thought I’ve had two lives: one making money, and another writing music.’

Too often, perhaps, we expect an artist's work to resemble his or her character, and so we look for similarities between them that don't exist. But in many ways Howard Blake is just like his music: accessible, unpretentious and communicative, if not without darker moments.

A few days before our meeting in July 2011 he rang to ask if the interview could be brought forward by half an hour because of a subsequent appointment. I agreed, although I felt that there would be plenty of time. In fact there wasn’t, partly because on my way there I took a short cut which turned out to not be one and partly because after I arrived he talked a lot. And there was a lot to talk about, because his music has regained much of the popularity that it enjoyed during the 1980s and 1990s. ‘What happened to …?’ was in fact one of my reasons for wanting to interview him. Another was his willingness to state that much contemporary music occupies an irrelevant backwater and that the public tends to stay away from the first performances of new commissions because in the past they’ve felt ‘assaulted’ and ‘depressed and insulted’ by the results.

We met at his home in Kensington, London – a top-floor flat, originally two artist studios, which retains a lofty central workspace. The main part of that room, illuminated through glass panels in the roof, contains his piano, work desk, books and scores, and a small sofa; stairs at one end of the room lead up to a small balcony where he keeps his computer and photocopier. On the walls are framed artworks, photos and a platinum disc of his soundtrack CD for the animated film The Snowman, the score for which, despite his many achievements in the concert hall, he’ll probably always be best known. The extent to which the success of that work has been a hindrance rather than a help to his career was something else that I wanted to ask him about.

In his seventies he retains the demeanour of a much younger man, particularly when talking. He listened carefully to my questions before responding, then illustrated his answers with anecdotes that introduced into the conversation a wealth of characters from the worlds of music, theatre and cinema.