David Blake (composer)

David Blake (born 2 September 1936) is an English composer and founder member of the Department of Music at the University of York.

Blake was born in London. Following national service, he learnt Mandarin Chinese and spent one year in Hong Kong. He went on to read music at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where his teachers were Patrick Hadley, Peter Tranchell and Raymond Leppard. He was awarded the Mendelssohn Scholarship for Composition in 1960, and, uniquely for a British composer of his generation, he went to East Berlin to study with Arnold Schoenberg's pupil, the Marxist composer Hanns Eisler, as a Meisterschüler of the GDR Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts, Berlin). During this time, he composed the first of his acknowledged compositions – the Variations for Piano and the String Quartet No. 1.

In 1963, he was awarded the Granada Arts Fellowship at the newly opened University of York, and the following year, with Wilfrid Mellers and Peter Aston, he founded the Department of Music there. He was Lecturer in Music in the Department until 1976 and then succeeded Wilfrid Mellers as Professor. His first important commission came in 1966, from the York Festival, for his Chamber Symphony. Subsequent commissions included Lumina (soloists, chorus and large orchestra) for the 1970 Leeds Festival; the Violin Concerto for the 1976 BBC Proms; Toussaint, an opera in three acts for the English National Opera, first produced in 1977 (and revived 1983); Rise Dove (solo bass and orchestra) for the BBC; The Plumber's Gift, an opera in two acts for the English National Opera, first produced in 1989 with libretto by John Birtwhistle; and the Cello Concerto, commissioned by the BBC for the 1993 Cheltenham Festival.

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