Early Life
Blake did not come from a family of professional musicians although his mother played piano and violin and his father sang tenor in the church choir. At grammar school he sang lead parts in Gilbert and Sullivan operas and was recognised as a good pianist, but few were aware that he was also writing music.
At the age of 18 years Blake won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music as both pianist and composer but found himself at odds with his contemporaries in regard to musical style. He virtually stopped composing and became interested in film and on leaving the Academy briefly worked as a film projectionist at the National Film Theatre. Missing music he played piano in pubs and clubs for a couple of years until being discovered and signed by EMI to make a solo album and work as a session musician on many recordings. This led him to work as an arranger and a composer, a role which gradually became his full-time occupation.
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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