Sir Harrison Birtwistle (15 July 1934 – 18 April 2022) was an English composer of
contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music is classical music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 Modernism (music), modern forms of Post-tonal music theory, post-tonal music after th ...
best known for his operas, often based on mythological subjects.
Among his
many compositions, his better known works include ''
The Triumph of Time'' (1972) and the operas ''
The Mask of Orpheus'' (1986), ''
Gawain
Gawain (), also known in many other forms and spellings, is a character in Arthurian legend, in which he is King Arthur's nephew and a Knight of the Round Table. The prototype of Gawain is mentioned under the name Gwalchmei in the earliest ...
'' (1991), and ''
The Minotaur'' (2008). The last of these was ranked by music critics at ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
'' in 2019 as the third-best piece of the 21st-century. Even his compositions that were not written for the stage often showed a theatrical approach. A performance of his saxophone concerto ''
Panic
Panic is a sudden sensation of fear, which is so strong as to dominate or prevent reason and logical thinking, replacing it with overwhelming feelings of anxiety and frantic agitation consistent with an animalistic fight-or-flight reac ...
'' during the BBC's
Last Night of the Proms caused "national notoriety".
He received many international awards and honorary degrees.
Life and career
Early life
Harrison Birtwistle was born in
Accrington
Accrington is a town in the Hyndburn borough of Lancashire, England. It lies about east of Blackburn, west of Burnley, east of Preston, north of Manchester and is situated on the culverted River Hyndburn. Commonly abbreviated by locals to ...
, a mill town in Lancashire around 20 miles north of
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...
. 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. Much of his youth was spent roaming the countryside near his home, and his frustration with the disruption of the nature by modern technology would affect his later work profoundly.
Other youthful activities included the construction of amateur theatrical sets, and the subsequent imagining of dramas taking place inside them.
Birtwistle became proficient enough to play in the local
military-style band and also played in the orchestra that accompanied
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan was a Victorian era, Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), who jointly created fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which ...
productions and the local choral society's performances of Handel's ''
Messiah
In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias (; ,
; ,
; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of '' mashiach'', messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a ''mashiach ...
''. From around this time Birtwistle first composed, later describing his early pieces as "sub-
Vaughan Williams".
In 1952 he entered the
Royal Manchester College of Music
The Royal Manchester College of Music (RMCM) was a tertiary level conservatoire in Manchester, north-west England. It was founded in 1893 by the German-born conductor Sir Charles Hallé in 1893.
In 1972, the Royal Manchester College of Music ...
in Manchester on a clarinet scholarship. While there he came in contact with contemporaries including
Peter Maxwell Davies,
Alexander Goehr
Peter Alexander Goehr (; born 10 August 1932) is an English composer and academic.
Goehr was born in Berlin in 1932, the son of the conductor and composer Walter Goehr, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg. In his early twenties he emerged as a centra ...
, the pianist
John Ogdon
John Andrew Howard Ogdon (27 January 1937 – 1 August 1989) was an English pianist and composer.
Biography Career
Ogdon was born in Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire, and attended the Manchester Grammar School, before studying at the ...
, and the trumpeter
Elgar Howarth.
He then completed two years of National Service in the Royal Artillery (Plymouth) Band, based in
Oswestry
Oswestry ( ; ) is a market town, civil parish and historic railway town in Shropshire, England, close to the Welsh border. It is at the junction of the A5, A483 and A495 roads.
The town was the administrative headquarters of the Borough ...
.
Composing career
Birtwistle served as director of music at
Cranborne Chase School from 1962 until 1965, before continuing his studies at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
on a
Harkness Fellowship, where he completed the opera ''
Punch and Judy'' to a libretto by
Stephen Pruslin
Stephen Lawrence Pruslin (16 April 1940 – 25 September 2022) was an American pianist and librettist who relocated to London in the 1970s to work with Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle.
Early life and career
Born in New York, Pruslin ...
.
It was premiered at the
Aldeburgh Festival;
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...
is said to have left during intermission.
This work, together with ''Verses for Ensembles'' and ''
The Triumph of Time'', led to greater exposure for Birtwistle in the classical music world. The orchestral work ''The Triumph of Time'', inspired by a woodcut by
Pieter Bruegel, premiered in 1972.
In 1972, he wrote the music to the film ''
The Offence
''The Offence'' is a 1973 British crime neo noir drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, based upon the 1968 stage play ''This Story of Yours'' by John Hopkins. It stars Sean Connery as police detective Johnson, who kills suspected child moles ...
'', starring
Sean Connery
Sir Sean Connery (born Thomas Connery; 25 August 1930 – 31 October 2020) was a Scottish actor. He was the first actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond on film, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983. Origina ...
, his only film score. In 1975, he became musical director of the newly established
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London, commonly known as the National Theatre (NT), is one of the United Kingdom's three most prominent publicly funded performing arts venues, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House. I ...
in London, a post he held until 1983.
He received a
knighthood
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the ...
(1988) and was made a
Companion of Honour
The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded on 4 June 1917 by King George V as a reward for outstanding achievements. Founded on the same date as the Order of the British Empire, it is sometimes ...
(2001). From 1994 to 2001 he was
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell (, rare: September 1659 – 21 November 1695) was an English composer.
Purcell's style of Baroque music was uniquely English, although it incorporated Italian and French elements. Generally considered among the greatest E ...
Professor of Composition at
King's College London
King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...
. Birtwistle was the 1987 recipient of the
University of Louisville
The University of Louisville (UofL) is a public research university in Louisville, Kentucky. It is part of the Kentucky state university system. When founded in 1798, it was the first city-owned public university in the United States and one ...
Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his epic opera ''
The Mask of Orpheus''.
Though well-established in the classical music world, Birtwistle was relatively unknown to the general public until the mid-1990s, when two events increased his profile with the wider audience. In 1994 two anti-modernist musicians,
Frederick Stocken
(James) Frederick Stocken (born 1967) is a British classical composer, organist and musicologist.
Compositions
Stocken's music first reached a wide audience with ''Lament for Bosnia'', which was released on CD (becoming the number one best-sell ...
and
Keith Burstein
Keith Burstein born 1957 as Keith Burston (the anglicised
form adopted by his father of the surname, which Burstein later dropped) is an English composer, conductor and music theorist with Russian family origins. He is noted for his fervent ch ...
, calling themselves "The Hecklers", organised a demonstration at the first night of a revival of his opera ''
Gawain
Gawain (), also known in many other forms and spellings, is a character in Arthurian legend, in which he is King Arthur's nephew and a Knight of the Round Table. The prototype of Gawain is mentioned under the name Gwalchmei in the earliest ...
'' at the
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House (ROH) is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. It is the home of The Royal ...
, London. The following year, Birtwistle's saxophone concertante work ''
Panic
Panic is a sudden sensation of fear, which is so strong as to dominate or prevent reason and logical thinking, replacing it with overwhelming feelings of anxiety and frantic agitation consistent with an animalistic fight-or-flight reac ...
'' 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
Daily or The Daily may refer to:
Journalism
* Daily newspaper, newspaper issued on five to seven day of most weeks
* ''The Daily'' (podcast), a podcast by ''The New York Times''
* ''The Daily'' (News Corporation), a defunct US-based iPad new ...
'', it met with incomprehension from many viewers.
In 1995, he was awarded the
Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. At the 2006
Ivor Novello Awards he criticised pop musicians at the event for performing too loudly and using too many
cliché
A cliché ( or ) is an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being weird or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was consi ...
s.
Among the musicians who performed his works are conductors
Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim (; in he, דניאל בארנבוים, born 15 November 1942) is an Argentine-born classical pianist and conductor based in Berlin. He has been since 1992 General Music Director of the Berlin State Opera and "Staatskapellmeist ...
,
Christoph von Dohnányi
Christoph von Dohnányi (; born 8 September 1929) is a German conductor.
Biography
Youth and World War II
Dohnányi was born in Berlin, Germany to Hans von Dohnanyi, a German jurist of Hungarian ancestry, and Christine Bonhoeffer. His uncle ...
,
Oliver Knussen and
Simon Rattle
Sir Simon Denis Rattle (born 19 January 1955) is a British-German conductor. He rose to international prominence during the 1980s and 1990s, while music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (1980–1998). Rattle was principa ...
,
violinist
Christian Tetzlaff, the soloist in the world premiere of his violin concerto in 2011, and pianist
Pierre-Laurent Aimard
Pierre-Laurent Aimard (born 9 September 1957) is a French pianist.
Biography
Aimard was born in Lyon, where he entered the conservatory. Later he studied with Yvonne Loriod and with Maria Curcio.
In 1973, he was awarded the chamber music priz ...
, the soloist in the first performance of his ''Responses'' for piano and orchestra in 2014.
Private life
Birtwistle had a low media profile, but occasionally gave interviews. In 2019, he was interviewed for ''
Composer of the Week
''Composer of the Week'' is a long-running biographical music programme produced by BBC Cymru Wales and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
It is broadcast daily from Monday to Friday at 12 noon for an hour, each week's programmes being a self-contained ...
'' on
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also featuring. The sta ...
.
[ BBC. Retrieved 19 April 2022.] He married Sheila Duff, a singer, in 1958.
The couple had three sons,
two of whom,
Adam
Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...
and
Silas
Silas or Silvanus (; Greek: Σίλας/Σιλουανός; fl. 1st century AD) was a leading member of the Early Christian community, who according to the New Testament accompanied Paul the Apostle on his second missionary journey.
Name and et ...
, are artists.
Sheila died in 2012.
Birtwistle had a stroke in 2021 and died at his home in
Mere, Wiltshire
Mere is a small town and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. It lies at the extreme southwestern tip of Salisbury Plain, close to the borders of Somerset and Dorset. The parish includes the hamlets of Barrow Street, Burton, Charnage, Limpers ...
, on 18 April 2022, aged 87.
Music
Style
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
The Second Viennese School (german: Zweite Wiener Schule, Neue Wiener Schule) was the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and close associates in early 20th-century Vienn ...
to refer to Birtwistle, Goehr, and Davies.
Birtwistle's 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
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...
and
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithology, ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th-century classical music, 20th century. His m ...
, whom he acknowledged as influences, and his technique of juxtaposing blocks of sound is sometimes compared to that of
Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (; also spelled Edgar; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm; he coine ...
. Hearing the work of
Boulez
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music.
Born in Mon ...
(''
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. These were toned down in Birtwistle's later decades as his compositional style developed.
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.
Works
Source:
Opera
* ''
Punch and Judy'' (1966–1967)
* ''
The Mask of Orpheus'' (1973–84)
* ''
Gawain
Gawain (), also known in many other forms and spellings, is a character in Arthurian legend, in which he is King Arthur's nephew and a Knight of the Round Table. The prototype of Gawain is mentioned under the name Gwalchmei in the earliest ...
'' (1990)
* ''
The Last Supper
Image:The Last Supper - Leonardo Da Vinci - High Resolution 32x16.jpg, 400px, alt=''The Last Supper'' by Leonardo da Vinci - Clickable Image, Depictions of the Last Supper in Christian art have been undertaken by artistic masters for centuries, ...
'' (2000)
* ''
The Minotaur'' (2008)
* ''
The Corridor
Corridor or The Corridor may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Films
* ''The Corridor'' (1968 film), a 1968 Swedish drama film
* ''The Corridor'' (1995 film), a 1995 Lithuanian drama film
* ''The Corridor'' (2010 film), a 2010 Canadia ...
'', chamber opera (2009)
* ''The Cure'' (2014–15)
Other music
* ''Refrains and Choruses'' (1957),
wind quintet
* ''
The Triumph of Time'' (1971–72), orchestra
* ''
Silbury Air'' (1976–77), chamber orchestra
* ''Secret Theatre'' (1984), chamber ensemble
* ''
Panic
Panic is a sudden sensation of fear, which is so strong as to dominate or prevent reason and logical thinking, replacing it with overwhelming feelings of anxiety and frantic agitation consistent with an animalistic fight-or-flight reac ...
'' (1995), alto saxophone, jazz drum kit and orchestra
* ''Theseus Game'' (2002), large ensemble with two conductors (2002)
* ''In Broken Images'' (2011), large ensemble (after the antiphonal music of
Gabrieli)
* ''Songs from the Same Earth'' (2012–13), tenor and piano
* ''Responses'' (2013–14), piano concerto
* ''Deep Time'' (2016), orchestra
Honours and awards
* 1986
Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, University of Louisville
* 1986
Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
The ''Ordre des Arts et des Lettres'' (Order of Arts and Letters) is an order of France established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture. Its supplementary status to the was confirmed by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Its purpose is t ...
,
Ministry of Culture, France
* 1988
Knight Bachelor
The title of Knight Bachelor is the basic rank granted to a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not inducted as a member of one of the organised orders of chivalry; it is a part of the British honours system. Knights Bachelor are ...
(Kt),
Monarchy of the United Kingdom
The monarchy of the United Kingdom, commonly referred to as the British monarchy, is the constitutional form of government by which a hereditary sovereign reigns as the head of state of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies (the Baili ...
in the
1988 Queen's Birthday Honours List
* 1989 Fellowship,
Royal Northern College of Music
The Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) is a conservatoire located in Manchester, England. It is one of four conservatoires associated with the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. In addition to being a centre of music education ...
(FRNCM).
* 1994 Honorary Fellow,
Royal Academy of Arts
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...
* 1995
Ernst von Siemens Music Prize
* 2001
Order of the Companions of Honour
The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded on 4 June 1917 by King George V as a reward for outstanding achievements. Founded on the same date as the Order of the British Empire, it is sometimes ...
(CH),
Monarchy of the United Kingdom
The monarchy of the United Kingdom, commonly referred to as the British monarchy, is the constitutional form of government by which a hereditary sovereign reigns as the head of state of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies (the Baili ...
in the
2001 New Years Honours List
* 2003
Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards
The Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards are given annually for live classical music-making in the United Kingdom. The awards were first held in 1989 and are independent of any commercial interest.
Since 2003, BBC Radio 3 has been the media ...
Large-scale Composition in London
* 2007 Foreign Honorary Member,
American Academy of Arts and Letters
* 2015
Wihuri Sibelius Prize
Honorary degrees
* 1994
University of Sussex
, mottoeng = Be Still and Know
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £14.4 million (2020)
, budget = £319.6 million (2019–20)
, chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar
, vice_chancellor = Sasha Roseneil
, ...
,
Doctor of Music (D.Mus.)
* 1996
City, University of London, D.Mus.
* 2008
University of London
The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degr ...
, D.Mus.
* 2010
University of Cambridge
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
, D.Mus.
* 2013
Bath Spa University
Bath Spa University is a public university in Bath, England, with its main campus at Newton Park, about west of the centre of the city. The university has other campuses in the city of Bath, and one at Corsham Court in Wiltshire.
The inst ...
, Doctorate
* 2014
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
, D.Mus.
* 2014
Edge Hill University, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
References
Notes
References
Cited sources
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Further reading
*
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External links
Biography of Harrison Birtwistle on his publisher's website, Boosey & Hawkes
Biography of Harrison Birtwistle on his former publisher's website, Universal Edition
*
Profile on Harrison Birtwistleat Rayfield Allied
*
on
WNIB Classical 97, Chicago, 8 December 1996
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Birtwistle, Harrison
1934 births
2022 deaths
20th-century classical composers
21st-century classical composers
English classical composers
English opera composers
Male opera composers
Brass band composers
Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour
Knights Bachelor
Composers awarded knighthoods
Deutsche Grammophon artists
Alumni of the Royal Academy of Music
Academics of King's College London
Fellows of King's College London
Harkness Fellows
Ivor Novello Award winners
People from Accrington
Alumni of the Royal Manchester College of Music
Academics of the Royal Academy of Music
Honorary Members of the Royal Philharmonic Society
Members of the Academy of Arts, Berlin
English male classical composers
20th-century English musicians
Ernst von Siemens Music Prize winners
20th-century English composers
21st-century English composers