COMPOSERS

JOHN
BLOOD

Whilst not quite under a spreading chestnut tree (nor a gooseberry bush), it was on March the first 1951 that I decided to pop into the world, to the delight of Ruddington’s harmonious blacksmith, my father, and his beautiful young wife, who was clearly expecting my arrival.

As a blond and cherubic five-year-old, surrounded by the clank of anvil and the cluck of chicken, I listened enthralled to my father playing The Teddy Bear’s Picnic, The Dambuster’s March or a Bach Toccata on the piano, or accompanying my mother as she sang a Mozart aria or The Holy City. Music was already exciting - and a natural, every day doing-thing.

Piano-lessons began when I was nine, and then came the startling move from tiny village school to one of the largest comprehensives in the country. Continuing piano-lessons (later with Nicholas Maw’s father) helped ease this initial step into the larger world, and by 1965 I found myself waiting in the wings of a packed Albert Hall as Frankie Vaughan introduced the winner of a National Boy’s Club Award for music. The lights dimmed, and a spotlight followed a little boy (me) across the stage towards a huge grand black piano, on which I played Mozart’s Fantasia in D minor K. 397.

The cello had now entered my life, and I began playing in every orchestra that would let me join. Here was a world of total ecstasy: Beethoven and Borodin, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky. I immediately started composing in earnest: huge orchestral tone-poems were written almost weekly, and I was for ever standing in front of the school orchestra, an ardent teenager teeming with passion and pimples, cajoling the players to give of their all. My first symphony was written when I was eighteen, and attracted interest in the local press and from the BBC, who broadcast a performance conducted by the young composer.

Probably on the strength of this, I was accepted at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where my first study was composition, with piano and cello a joint second. Norman Fulton and Roy Teed were my composition professors and, miraculously, I was allowed to go my own merry way, with little or no interference from either of them. After three years I somehow became a GRSM, obtained an LRAM on the piano and was offered an extra year’s postgraduate study devoted entirely to composition. I won the Eric Coates composition prize with my Bobby-Dazzler Overture - and then came that seminal moment: out into the big bad world I had to go.

Having no income whatsoever, I lived in a dilapidated, miniscule bed-sit; and in order to continue composing I did various part-time jobs. These ranged from spotting suspicious applications at the Passport Office, furniture-moving, sending books to the landed gentry from the mail-order department of Hatchards, and even working as a film extra. In this latter capacity I appeared as a pianist in Lady Chatterley’s Lover; but my crowning glory came (again as a pianist) in an amusing advert for Pot Noodles.

In 1975 I met Andrew Guyatt, one of the founders of The British Music Society. The society was keen, at that time, on promoting new works and encouraging performances of neglected ones. I became involved in performing at their concerts, where such pieces as my piano Sonatina, Nor’wester Caprice, and Dark Scenes of Winter for bass oboe were given their first public performances. I was also commissioned by the society to write a song-cycle for tenor and piano, From a railway carriage, which later appeared in a version with wind quintet and piano.

That year I also met Lady Bliss, whose husband had just died. She gave me much kind and practical encouragement, which included asking me to help her make a catalogue of Sir Arthur’s private music collection. Most amazingly of all, I was able to work undisturbed at my compositions in her beautiful home. It was here that I wrote and orchestrated the ballet Little Boy Lost and the concerto for trumpet, oboe and strings, Boreas. Her generosity was a life-saver, for back at the Kilburn bedsit life was not much fun. However, by a stunning stroke of luck the kitchen ceiling fell on my head; a horrified environmental health officer visited, and I managed to flee to a one-room council flat in the East End.

In 1979, with help from Eric Crozier, I had secured a small grant from the Performing Rights Society which had given me valuable time to write several large-scale pieces. But from 1975 onwards my main source of income was freelance work for the music publisher Novello. In my new-found home I constantly juggled with the financial necessity of preparing other composer’s scores to keep a roof over my head, and the absolute need of writing my own music – a conundrum I still find difficult to solve.

My experience as a cellist has given me much practical insight into musicmaking: I believe in writing music that is both challenging and satisfying. It is the playing that is important to me: if musicians play with love, people will surely listen. To this end, I was writing music for groups and ensembles with which I was closely connected. My brother Christopher is a professional trumpeter, and many pieces, such as Music for St Ives for brass quintet, commissioned for the 1981 St Ives Festival in Cornwall and The Christmas Card, came about as a direct result of his enthusiasm. Similarly, I wrote many pieces for the Viente Ensemble, who asked for specific and unusual woodwind combinations – Periwinkle Duo and the Viente Divertissement being two such pieces which this group often played. Around this time the Stratford-Upon-Avon Festival commissioned Bacchanale for sixteen horns, an ensemble which produces an extraordinary sound.

If you had gone into your local supermarket in 1986 and bought a packet of PG Tips, you would have received, as an added bonus, an audio cassette from Random House attached to your tea-bags. This was of John Nettleton (of the Royal Shakespeare Company) reading The Story of Babar and Babar’s Travels, featuring music specially composed and recorded by John Blood. I had written lots of incidental music for Tellastory children’s cassettes, including many for recordings of the delightful Janet and Allan Ahlberg stories; but the music for Babar proved an instant success. I later made a concert work of the music for wind ensemble, Babar the Elephant and in 1986 made another version for wind band, which was first performed in Bedford.

At this time I wrote several wind band pieces for children, including Manton Heights for the inaugural concert of Bedford Modern School Wind Band, and later The Christmas Express, which portrays a train hurtling by Wenceslas Castle, across the harbour where three ships are sailing, startling waltzing skaters and eventually halting next to the cathedral, where a Christmas carol can be heard. Children know what music is about, and when they meet a challenge and play something they love, the result is wonderful.

Esterházy Sinfonietta was commissioned by the London-based Esterházy Orchestra for their inaugural concert in the Banqueting House, Whitehall; I conducted the first performance. The orchestra was the brainchild of Courtney Hall, and its players had splendidly camp fun in their especially tailored, authentic eighteenth-century court costumes. The work was later recorded and broadcast by the BBC in 1987, with Vernon Handley conducting the Ulster Orchestra.

Living in a council-block for ten years can have its drawbacks, not least the task of constantly cleaning away graffiti that appear on the doorstep overnight. So when, in 1990, the love of my life David Furber suggested we take the plunge and buy a house together, I said YES!! Having spent my entire adult life living in a single room, the luxury of a house (albeit a small terraced one, and one that I would have to rebuild from the inside out) seemed mind-blowing: and it was.

The period from the early 90s until the present has been one of the happiest of my life. During it I have written several commissions for the Hawkshead Summer Music Festival, including the sombre Esthwaite Elegy for horn and piano. I have also become involved in the intriguing world of the Pianola. As well as producing many arrangements, perforated by the Southport Roll Company, I was asked by the country’s leading virtuoso pianola performer, Michael Broadway, if I would write him a concert piece. The Witches of Hawkshead - Tarantella Diabolica was the result: a big, turbulent piece that Michael has played all over the place, including the Steinway Hall in London and at the 2001 Biennale in Venice.

The death of two very close musical friends after long and anguished illness had a profound and long-lasting effect upon me, making me value things and people in a different way. I still continued to write music, but the idea of seeking fame and fortune from my compositions no longer seemed so relevant. After thirty years of working for music-publishers as a copyist and editor, the physical labour of preparing other composers’ operas (I have worked on well over twenty), symphonies, concertos and quartets, and making countless piano-reductions and orchestral parts, began to take its toll. Even so, I still want to write music that reaches the very depth of things as no other form of art can, and discover that elusive ingredient which distinguishes living music from lifeless note-spinning: everyone can instantly recognise this essential quality. It is there in the inventive abundance and world-embracing joy of a Tchaikovsky ballet, as well as in the despairing cries of a Honegger symphony.

A welcome, much-needed impetus was given to my creative energy in 2001, when the composer Giles Swayne asked me to join him in an exciting, new adventure: the independent music publishing company, Gonzaga Music Ltd. As a companion to his own set of piano-pieces, Scrap-book, I immediately wrote Stamp-album - of which Giles subsequently gave the first performance. To see how this autobiography continues, watch the CATALOGUE page, as I strive once again to pursue music’s elusive, enigmatic and indefinable magic.

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