With its wonderfully uplifting music and lyrics, Howard Blake’s Walking in the Air — written for the 1982 animated adaptation of Raymond Briggs' The Snowman — annually raises our spirits, melts our hearts and momentarily transports us to another world.
Howard tells M he first ‘heard’ the tune in 1970 as he walked gloomily across Perranporth beach in Cornwall during a reassessment of his life and career. The enduring and mesmerising appeal and success of the music, the words, the film and even the long-running stage show — now in its record-breaking 14th year at Sadler’s Wells' Peacock Theatre in London — is a matter of enormous personal pride.
‘I am often asked whether I feel The Snowman has typecast me, and I have to admit of course it has. It’s like a big placard around my neck saying “Snowman”,’ Howard tells M from his artist’s studio home in London’s Kensington Square. ‘I have written so much other music that I am equally proud of, but I suppose it is much better than being recognised for something which I am not proud of. I cannot possibly complain about the success it has brought me.'
'Walking in the Air unlocks something in people which makes them feel better.’
Howard’s vivid recollections of his difficult times as a classical music student are a far cry from the global fame he now enjoys. He is forthright and candid in his views and pleased to give advice to budding composers and writers.
‘I am a composer,’ he asserts robustly. ‘I am not a songwriter. Because the musical world has been so massively hijacked by big business we tend to see the single pop song as the all-important unit. But there is so much more to music than that.
‘While I have always taken a wide interest in every sort of music whatever its origins, the wonderful possibilities of extended music — of concertos, symphonies, opera, ballet, film and instrumental music in all its myriad forms — this is what I am interested in and what I both listen to and continually attempt to create.’
Howard started playing the piano aged six and liked to pick out tunes by ear, having a gift for music from an early age: ‘I sang in the church choir and took lead parts at school in Gilbert and Sullivan operas. I was also assistant organist at the parish church.’
He wrote his first extended piece of music, a march in D major, at the age of 12: ‘My local piano teacher didn’t believe I’d written it but then he took me under his wing and undertook to teach me harmony and counterpoint. I think I was very fortunate to receive that grounding so young.’
In 1957, at 18, he won a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music as a classical concert pianist, taking serious composition as a second study. In his first term he composed an ambitious tonal piano work called Variations on a theme of Bartok, which was very well-received by his professors.
'I was knocked out by the combination of moving image and orchestra.'
But the climate of opinion suddenly shifted in that year towards atonal music and this outlook started to actively discourage the writing of melodic music. Howard found it difficult to fit in and began to turn towards the idea of writing music for films, which seemed to offer far more freedom of style and expression. His musical head was turned one day when he watched the film The Battleship Potemkin.
‘I was knocked out by the combination of image and orchestra,’ he recalls to M. ‘It was an overwhelming emotion which made me want to study it as an art form, but no course of such study existed at that time.’
Leaving college in 1960 not knowing how he might achieve his aims, he saw an Evening Standard advert for a projectionist at the National Film Theatre (NFT) and applied for the job. This allowed him not only to make a living, but to see and study all the great films and listen to their music. He was also able to make his own films and write the music, which were shown at the NFT while he still worked there.
After two years he needed to move on. He had had great exposure to film and film soundtracks but began to greatly miss playing. ‘I was 23 years old, and I decided that if I wanted to play music perhaps I should just start at the very bottom. I got a job playing piano at a pub off Edgeware Road in London called The Lord Chancellor. It was the best thing I ever did, despite someone emptying a pint of beer over my head one night because I couldn’t play the tunes they wanted me to, like Sinatra or the Top Ten. I learnt about audience reaction and participation!
‘In order to play the tunes they wanted, I learned 10 or so a day. The pub became so popular the police had to be called one night because it was so busy. I met a drummer who knew a nightclub in Bayswater, so we played pop in the pub until 11pm and then went to the nightclub to play jazz.’
One night he was discovered by an EMI talent scout and whisked off to become staff pianist at the famous Abbey Road studios, working alongside The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Cliff Richard and Tom Jones.
‘What happened in the 60s was a phenomenon,’ Howard says. ‘You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing The Beatles. I had to think seriously about whether I should be writing two-and-a-half-minute pop songs because that was the unit of currency. I had a go at it, but I started to discover that, apart from Bill Evans and Miles Davis, I much preferred Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev — music that flowed for an hour and not a formula with a guitar, bass guitar and set of drums. All music has its place, but that wasn’t for me.’
But playing piano at Abbey Road led Howard to opportunities in the film and TV world. He played on the hugely successful Avengers series for Laurie Johnson, who asked in 1967 if he would take over scoring the whole show.
‘I was staggeringly busy,’ Howard remembers of the period up to 1970. ‘But even though I was making a lot of money from all of this commercial media work, I still hadn’t really found a way of writing the music that I felt was inside me and which I more and more wanted to write. This started to produce serious tensions, and I started to become ill. A doctor advised me that I must take time off, and I decided then and there that I must, in some way, re-evaluate my life.
‘I drove off to the farthest point from London I could think of and rented a tiny beach hut near Perranporth beach in Cornwall. It was here that the embryo of The Snowman showed first signs of birth. I was rethinking and reassessing my career and this tune came into my head and my mind. Its voice was all about innocence and purity and was something different. This was the inspiration for what was to become The Snowman, but it took another 11 years to be born — perhaps the longest gestation period in history for a tune to come to life?’
Fast forward to the autumn of 1981. ‘I went to the studios of an animated film company called TVC run by a man called John Coates and he showed me an animation; an eight-minute filmed pencil sketch of The Snowman,’ Howard continues. ‘John had added a temporary track, but felt it wasn’t right. He asked if I would look at it. It included the boy flying with the snowman and the moment I saw it I said, “You could make a film without dialogue where the music is the entire script”. John wasn’t sure at all about this so I said I would make a demo, adding that I happened to have a tune that would be perfect.
‘Several days later I recorded piano for the eight minutes of film, which included the whole of what was to be Walking In the Air. Some sort of synchronicity was in the air. The film was made by Channel Four for Christmas 1982.’
The original version of Walking in the Air featured vocals by the-then 13-year-old St. Paul's Cathedral choirboy Peter Auty, who is now one of the UK's leading tenors. Aled Jones' famous version of the song, which came out three years after The Snowman, reached number five in the UK singles chart in December 1985.
Howard’s royalties have risen dramatically through the continued success of The Snowman. ‘It is played and performed in every country, but I only really know [about it] when I see my PRS royalties statements four times a year,’ he explains. ‘But I also have a huge catalogue of music on top of that, with 65 cinema and TV films contributing to a current total of 633 titles and counting. Of course, some of the money doesn’t filter through for years and some of it may be for a very small amount — like 0.0265p from Patagonia!’
Howard has a strong recollection of receiving his first royalty cheque for PRS: ‘I had this lovely girlfriend in Brighton and she told me, “You are never going to make any money from music.” In 1958 I got a cheque for £7, and you can imagine I was thrilled to bits. I wanted to put it in the bank but thought I should treat my sceptical girlfriend to a slap-up dinner. We had the dinner but when I showed her the cheque she laughed and pointed out that it was only for seven shillings, not £7 — I was distraught at the time, but I laugh about it now.’
‘Walking in the Air is played and performed in every country, but I only really know [about it] when I see my PRS royalties statements.'
You can read the remainder of our Q&A with Howard Blake below.
M: Why do you think The Snowman has become such an institution?
Howard: ‘I think it’s because it’s neither pop nor classical. It’s both. It has its roots in popular culture. The whole idea is about transcending; it’s about love and opening the world of imagination and it appeals to many different people on many different levels. People love to hear the tune because it makes them feel warm. They cheer and they cry when the snowman melts. It unlocks something in people which makes them feel better.’
The Snowman is still a regular fixture in your daily work…
‘I am overseeing the production of The Snowman at the Peacock Theatre at Sadler’s Wells in London. It’s the longest-ever-running Christmas show, and we have just committed to another 10 years. There will be 66 performances this year, and I will be overseeing it with a benevolent eye! It is also due to go to Korea and Finland, and we have just done the show at the Lowry in Salford, Manchester.’
You’ve composed music for orchestras, solo works and film. How does your approach to each differ?
‘Music is music. Mozart always wrote to commission. I have always worked on the basis that I should write the best thing I possibly can. I am part of the process whatever the genre. It is a kind of bond between the composer and the public. I am driven to write something that I believe will connect with the public.’
Has the way you work changed since you first started composing music?
‘Writing is thinking of music and being able to write it down. I used to always write with a pencil on music paper, but computers came in in the nineties and I was introduced to the Sibelius system, where you can write music directly on to the computer and it plays it back to you immediately. I think we are up to Sibelius 7, but I am still on Sibelius 5 which I am happy with. Initially I found it very difficult to write on the computer but it does mean you can write a lot more music and quicker, too. It’s a fantastic tool.’
What is the landscape like for today’s emerging composers?
‘I believe there are lots of opportunities for young composers. More than ever in fact, because there are so many production companies, whether it’s TV, radio or film in all different genres. People often say to me, “How do I become famous and successful?” The truth is that it’s a long, hard haul and you have to come up with something within yourself that you really want to hear, in the hope that others will want to hear it too. You have to identify that and then market that, and if you are determined you will find time to do it because it’s important to you, even if you are doing another job at the same time.
‘I have lost friends because they become envious. I used to love to meet up with other composers, but the truth is that many find it very difficult to make a living out of music. They say, “It’s all right for you,” but I have worked very hard for what I have achieved. I know it’s not easy, but you have to be determined and persistent to succeed, very much like anything else in life.’
