Music man passes on the baton

PROFESSOR David Blake, stalwart of the University of York music department, conducts his last concert on campus tomorrow. Thirty eight years after he moved to York to take up the inaugural Granada Arts Fellowship at the university and became a founder member of the music department a year later, he is steeping down from his lecturing post at the end of this academic year, with his 65th birthday fast approaching in September.

Will he miss conducting the university's choirs and orchestras? "We'll see what happens. I won't be putting the baton down, but I won't be sitting by the phone. I'll just wait and see if I'm asked to do anything," he says.

There is a musical tour of Greece to come next month, and Professor Blake will continue to be managing director of the University of Music Press but he can now devote more time to writing music at his Wensleydale home in Askrigg, having composed in the past for York Festival, the BBC Proms and English National Opera.

His latest composition, The Shades Of Love, forms the opening piece in the University Orchestra's programme tomorrow: the closing concert of 2000/2001 University of York orchestral and chamber concert series, a series he was responsible for starting.

How times have progressed since the Londoner from Shepherd's Bush arrived at the Heslington campus, via reading music at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; being awarded a scholarship for composition in 1960 and studying at the Academie der Kunste in East Berlin with Hanns Eisler (whose photographic portrait hangs on his study wall).

"When I arrived in York, there were 250 students and 35 tutors and no campus buildings; only Heslington hall, a building put up next to the Charles XII pub, a few cottages and King's Manor - and no music department," Professor Blake says.

"At the end of November 1963 I was called in by the Vice-Chancellor, Lord James, who said 'We realise we've made a mistake in not including music in our grand plan', and the reason they thought was that I'd got a choir going in which everyone mucked in and the lecturers and students sang with enormous enthusiasm."

Subsequently it was agreed music would be on the curriculum, taught in conjunction with English. Wilfrid Mellers was head-hunted as the first professor and David Blake was taken on as one of only two lecturers. Between the three, they taught nine half-time students in their initial intake at rooms in 86, Micklegate.

"Nice house but not right for music really," he recalls, grateful for the move to campus in 1969.

Only once has Professor Blake come close to leaving the university. "I nearly went in 1976 but I didn't," he says. "That was the year I got the Personal Chair here, being appointed Professor of Music, so I stayed!"

He may have moved to Wensleydale, "sick of being pushed off the pavement by tourists", yet Professor Blake has played his part in the union of town and gown, be it in the early days of York Arts Centre or the involvement of York musicians in the university choir or his establishment of the orchestral and chamber concert series, open to everyone (unlike the rock concerts on campus).

A performer himself - although he stopped playing the piano in public last year - Professor Blake believes the music department's emphasis on playing has been its defining success.

"The real crux of it all was that we differentiated ourselves from other universities in our philosophy: we believed you couldn't write wisely about music if you weren't playing it or listening to it," he says.

"In the early days, other universities were very sniffy about York, but they've all followed us.

"I can't say there's one abiding memory of my time at the university but the deepest satisfaction has been to see how successful this place has become. The fact is, it's one of the best departments in the country with an international reputation. To watch it grow from three people and a dog and a few students has been very fulfilling - and the future is even better with the extension plan for a research centre."

He believes the university's musical standards have led to improvements in the city's own choirs and orchestras, but he wishes the multi-purpose building design of the Barbican Centre auditorium could have had more depth to accommodate choral music.

"To be brutal, I think it was a design fault," he says.

"So, when you ask what York needs to make it a 'City of Music', ideally the answer is a real concert hall, to seat 1,000 to 1,200."

David Blake may be passing on the baton but his love of music is undimmed. "Most people who have made music their life say it takes you over, and it does, because it's mysterious and you can't get hold of it," he says. "It feeds you in so many ways; intellectually, emotionally and physically, as it's so complex.

"It may seem we're being hard nosed in studying it every day but then you'll go to a concert and something will transport you and you think 'Yes, this is what it's meant to be'. That's the case for everybody; professionals or amateurs, music gets to you."

Professor David Blake conducts the University of York Orchestra in his university farewell concert, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, York, tomorrow at 8pm. Box office: 01904 432439.

Updated: 10:47 Tuesday, June 26, 2001