‘I have always believed,” says pianist and composer Michael Blake, “that composing (and performing) is a political act in the broadest sense. I still believe that good music can subliminally change the way people think. Of course, many might say I’m being idealistic, but I don’t see any other reason for Âcomposing music.”
Blake marks his 60th birthday this month with concerts this weekend and next by the world-famous ÂFitzwilliam Quartet. His trenchant observations underline the fact that his career has encompassed far more than writing, teaching and playing. He’s been an effective music organiser — he founded New Music South Africa (NMSA) in 1999 and negotiated successfully for South ÂAfrica’s post-apartheid readmission to the International Society for Contemporary Music — and is often a provocative commentator on this country’s contemporary music scene.
Blake has been composing for five of his six decades: a “romantic ambition” kicked off, he says “by a series of books my parents gave me each year for my birthday and Christmas during my first few years of learning the piano. They were by a writer called Opal Wheeler, with titles like Johann Sebastian Bach: the Boy from Thuringia and Mozart: the Wonder Boy. I guess I identified with the fact that these stories were about their boyhoods.”
Conscious rebellion
Blake went on to study music at Wits University and attend summer courses overseas at Dartington and Darmstadt. And, with the ensembles Aquarius and Moonchild, he began presenting contemporary music to South African audiences, including initiating the first new-music series at the equally new Market Theatre.
For Blake, this was as much a political as a musical activity: “Everything I did after I had left school and Christian National Education behind (and whatever I could get away with at school) was [motivated by] conscious rebellion.
Composing and playing avant-garde music on the fringes and doing it at the Market was important because the Market was on the fringes too.
“My work at that time had sociopolitical overtones. I wrote a piece during the masterclass at Dartington in 1976 for [music ensemble] the Fires of London to workshop, which reflected on the Soweto riots that had started before I went abroad and were on my mind.”
Of course, says Blake, the new music he was listening to was “not so new, even then: Webern, ÂSchoenberg, Berg, Stravinsky, Ives”, although after “sneaking into” all of visiting composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s lectures at the SABC in 1971, “I started listening to recordings of Boulez, Berio, Nono, Cage, all very much alive and creating new works at that time. I was partly drawn to it because it resonated with my rebellious nature.”
Reinforcing comfort zones
But he regrets how the international music industry has robbed the “new music” label of much of its revolutionary fire and reduced it to a Âmarketing category.
“Out there in the wider world, we still have new-music festivals, concerts, broadcasts, ensembles and soloists. A lot of it has been dumbed down and reinforces comfort zones, but it’s called ‘new music’ for convenience. I still see ‘new music’ as that which challenges the listener and has the potential to change that person.”
Blake was not prepared to serve in the army during apartheid. He left South Africa in 1977 and stayed away for 20 years, during which time he studied with Sir Stanley Glasser at Goldsmiths College, taught there, founded ensembles including Metanola and London New Music, and became a regular broadcaster and guest at international new-music events. He says he found the London scene exhilarating: “I could hear something different every night and, in the 1980s, it was still possible to form an ensemble and apply for public and private funding to put on concerts [with a] supportive community of composers and musicians.”
When Blake returned home in 1998, he was saddened to find that “too much had not changed [especially the lack of] commissions for black composers. I decided to do something about that situation. That’s when NMSA and the New Music Indaba were established.”
Blake retired from the board of NMSA a decade later, but he feels that the “present board still has the same problems as it did in the first 10 years: insufficient funds and not enough volunteers to run it. We had the advantage of running the festival as part of the National Arts Festival.”
Blake wonders whether, without such a supportive institutional umbrella, it might not be more productive to devote limited resources wholly to workshops for young composers rather than to the draining effort of a new-music festival.
Growing young composers is as important to Blake as his own composition. He’s clear about what’s needed: an encouraging climate that exposes aspirants to a wide range of music, mentorship, feedback and discussion, practical — what he calls “rockface” — comprehensive education and performance opportunities right from the earliest stages. He believes it’s vital for young composers to become not only technically skilled, but also self-critical and able to express a personal voice.
“Young composers,” he says, “need to be able to create music in the many styles that are at their disposal and to make those styles their own. I fondly remember the Musicatreize/UP Chorale collaboration of 2001, when Mokale Koapeng and Phelelani Mnomiya wrote new works for the combined choirs in 20 parts. Those pieces arose from existing choral traditions but, boy, did they push them to the limits and set some kind of benchmark that has almost never been equalled.”
Keeping on
In Blake’s own work, it’s the string quartets that he considers most fondly. “Of those, No 1 is probably my favourite child, but I’m looking forward to writing as many as I can.” He’s also proud of his work on the multicomposer Bow Project, “something that relates to my own work: art and life must be interrelated”.
But 60 does not mark any kind of retirement. Blake has completed an opera, is completing his first symphony and looking forward to the performance of both.
He is a regular columnist for Art South Africa and is planning a January 2012 residency at the Nirox Foundation with Japanese string duo X(iksa), which will provide two weeks of uninterrupted immersion in composing and playing for six young South African composers.
“Oh,” he says, almost as an afterthought, “and getting all the available benefits for senior citizens.”
The Fitzwilliam Quartet with Michael Blake will present concerts of work by Blake, Percy Grainger and Shostakovich at the SABC auditorium, Sea Point, on October 16 at 4pm and at the Dr Miriam Makeba Hall, Unisa, Pretoria, on October 20 at 7.30pm