Composers in conversation: Blake and Finnissy

By Christian Drew, Music undergraduate student.

If Michael Finnissy describes a composer as “UNOFFICIAL New Music, the artisan’s workshop not the sausage-factory, catwalk or gilt-edged securities type of new music”, it’s more than likely that you’re in for a treat. The composer in question is Michael Blake. Originally from South Africa, his compositions regularly incorporate an extensive knowledge of African music, both folk and ancient, with the influences of a training in Europe and Johannesburg. The result, as we soon found out, is a music that navigates and abstracts a diversity of idioms with a true clarity and substance.

The setting for our encounter with Blake’s music was an open discussion with our own Michael – Finnissy that is. And what better way to get to know him than by eavesdropping on a conversation between two friends. From tales of borrowing stacks of Stravinsky, Bartok and Webern LPs in his university days, to mbira music and the sociopolitical contexts of contemporary composition in South Africa, conversation flowed from personal anecdotes to aesthetic debates, and everywhere in between.

As a gifted pianist, Blake treated us to a few performances of his own piano pieces, illustrating and pointing out some of the ways that he’s reimagined and engaged with the African music around him. Take 38a Hill Street Blues for example, where the sounds of uhadi bow music from the Eastern Cape are amalgamated with techniques from the honky tonk stride piano that he listened to in his teens. Taking these ideas further, Blake introduced us to a project that he launched called the Bow Project, where composers from a diversity of traditions and backgrounds were asked to compose a string quartet that reinterprets uhadi bow songs. Written at the end of this project, Blake tied up the afternoon by playing us his String Quartet No 3 (Nofinishi) – a piece that shifts elegantly between the shimmering overtones of uhadi bow music and moments of striking stillness. If you’ve resisted checking Michael Blake’s music out up until now, he has kindly donated a few of his CDs to the Hartley library for all to enjoy.

http://www.michaelblake.co.za/

Christian Drew.