Harrison Birtwistle

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Lore & Background

Harrison Birtwistle was born in Accrington, a mill town in Lancashire around 20 miles north of Manchester. His parents, Fred and Madge Birtwistle, ran a bakery, and his interest in music was encouraged by his mother. She bought him a clarinet when he was seven and arranged for him to have lessons with the local bandmaster. He attended Accrington Grammar School. In 1952 he entered the Royal Manchester College of Music on a clarinet scholarship, where he met contemporaries including Peter Maxwell Davies, Alexander Goehr, the pianist John Ogdon, and the trumpeter Elgar Howarth. Between 1955 and 1957 he completed national service in the Royal Artillery (Plymouth) Band, based in Oswestry. He served as director of music at Cranborne Chase School from 1962 until 1965, before continuing his studies at Princeton University on a Harkness Fellowship, where he completed the opera Punch and Judy. It was premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival; Benjamin Britten is said to have left during intermission. In 1975, he became musical director of the newly established Royal National Theatre in London, a post he held until 1983. He received a knighthood in 1988 and was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 2001. From 1994 to 2001 he was Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at King's College London. Birtwistle was the 1987 recipient of the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his epic opera The Mask of Orpheus. In 1995, his saxophone concertante work Panic was premiered in the second half of the Last Night of the Proms, as the first piece of contemporary music ever, to an estimated worldwide television audience of 100 million. According to the Daily Telegraph, it met with incomprehension from many viewers. He married Sheila Duff, a singer, in 1958. The couple had three sons, two of whom, Adam and Silas, are artists. Sheila died in 2012. Birtwistle had a stroke in 2021 and died at his home in Mere, Wiltshire, on 18 April 2022, aged 87.

Reader's Guide

Harrison Birtwistle's music is not categorised as belonging to any particular school or movement. For a time, he was described as belonging to the Manchester School, a phrase invented as a parallel to the Second Viennese School to refer to Birtwistle, Goehr, and Davies. His music is complex, written in a modernistic manner with a clear, distinctive voice, with sounds described as of "sonic brashness". His early work is sometimes evocative of Igor Stravinsky and Olivier Messiaen, whom he acknowledged as influences, and his technique of juxtaposing blocks of sound is sometimes compared to that of Edgard Varèse. Hearing the work of Boulez (Le Marteau sans maître) and Stockhausen (Zeitmaße and Gruppen) in his youth was also inspirational, with that of the latter composer in particular influencing his wind quintet, Refrains and Choruses (1957). His early pieces made frequent use of ostinati and often had a ritualistic feel. Even when not creating a visual piece involving stage action, Birtwistle's musical output remained frequently theatrical in conception. The music does not follow the logic and rules of classical forms such as sonata form, but is structured more like a drama. Furthermore, different musical instruments can almost be seen to take the part of different characters in the drama. This is especially apparent in a performance of Secret Theatre (1984). For various portions of the piece, a number of the instrumentalists perform in a soloist capacity. For this, they leave their seat in the ensemble and stand separately, to one side of the ensemble, returning to the group when they are no longer given that role. Among the musicians who performed his works are conductors Pierre Boulez, Sir Andrew Davis, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph von Dohnányi, Oliver Knussen and Simon Rattle, violinist Christian Tetzlaff, the soloist in the world premiere of his violin concerto in 2011, and pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the soloist in the first performance of his Responses for piano and orchestra in 2014.

Did You Know?

• Birtwistle's opera The Minotaur was ranked by music critics at The Guardian in 2019 as the third-best piece of the 21st century.
• His saxophone concerto Panic was premiered during the BBC's Last Night of the Proms to an estimated worldwide television audience of 100 million.
• Benjamin Britten is said to have left during intermission at the premiere of Birtwistle's opera Punch and Judy at the Aldeburgh Festival.
• Birtwistle was the 1987 recipient of the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his opera The Mask of Orpheus.
• He was Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at King's College London from 1994 to 2001.