Sir Harrison Birtwistle An appreciation

Clare Stevens reflects on some aspects of the life and work of the distinguished composer, who died earlier this year

Above: Clare Stevens Photo: Bruce Childs

Left: Sir Harrison Birtwistle Photo: Philip Gatward

Right: Conductor Martyn Brabbins (left) in conversation with Sir Harrison Birtwistle about his work Photo: Screenshot from BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra video / YouTube

Read our next feature to discover more about recent musical events in the West Midlands Exploring the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry a few weeks ago, I was encouraged by enthusiastic gallery staff to visit Be Yourself; Everyone Else is Already Taken, the first solo exhibition in his home town devoted to the work of artist, designer and campaigner Daniel Lismore. Several large rooms were full of spectacular life-size sculptures, dressed in extravagant garments made from vintage fabrics, jewellery and found objects. Suddenly I found myself in a smaller room where the costumes seemed oddly familiar.

Predominantly featuring shocking pink, except for some shiny turquoise nurses’ uniforms, they were the garish costumes from English National Opera (ENO)’s 2019 production of The Mask of Orpheus by Harrison Birtwistle, which I had actually seen; but then the pandemic came along and wiped so much from our memories, including my recollection that Daniel Lismore had been the opera’s designer. At the time I found the provocative flamboyance of the costumes an irritating distraction from the music and from the superb performances by the singers and orchestra. This was the opposite of my experience of seeing the original production of the opera 30 years previously when, new to contemporary music, I liked the more naturalistic setting but found Birtwistle’s music difficult to understand or relate to.

Tenor Daniel Norman, who sang the role of Orpheus the Myth in the recent production, admits that many people who had seen the original 1986 staging by Jocelyn Herbert found Lismore’s visuals for the 2019 version distracting. But for the performers he says it was a really joyful experience: ‘The director, Daniel Kramer, had immersed himself in the piece and really loved it; every day there was this real sense of discovery and adventure in the rehearsal room. There was something about Harry’s music that really enforced that.’

Top: Celebrating Birtwistle in Birmingham – Sir Harrison Birtwistle with conductor Geoffrey Paterson and BCMG Photo: Hannah Blake-Father

Above: The Mask of Orpheus Photo: Alastair Muir / English National Opera

Jonathan Cross, Professor of Musicology at the University of Oxford and the author of two books on Birtwistle’s music, sees the two approaches to the opera as completing a circle, from its roots in 1960s experimentalism to a contemporary presentation that appealed to a new, young public not even born when it was premiered: ‘It was … thrilling to observe a new generation finding its own way in to Birtwistle’s music and being enthused by it,’ Cross wrote in a tribute to the composer following his death earlier this year.

Birtwistle would probably have enjoyed the story of my unexpected encounter with the Orpheus costumes. He loved surprises, serendipity and looking at a musical, visual or thematic subject from different perspectives. There is a charming illustration of his delight in the unpredictable on the NMC Records Discovery website (funded by the ISM Trust), where Birtwistle demonstrates the intriguing sonic and visual patterns made by a pebble found on Aldeburgh beach when it is placed on a glass table … it even changes direction. (nmcrec.co.uk/discover/ harrison-birtwistles-aleatoric-pebble)

Although a self-confessedly shy man and a famously inscrutable and enigmatic interviewee, Birtwistle did agree to talk about his work quite frequently over the course of his career, explaining how he conceived pieces in his head, usually more or less complete, often while listening to a performance of an existing piece or while looking at a painting or engaged in a practical task. Asked if he then jotted down notes as an aide memoire, he said he ‘didn’t need to’, but that he did find the process of transferring his thoughts to manuscript paper very boring. One piece usually grew out of another, with the same basic material recurring and being developed in different ways, often over many years or even decades.

‘I see each piece as a texture and in that I will hear something that can be developed further,’ he said in the 2014 Robin Orr Lecture at the Cambridge University. ‘I don’t rewrite, not because I ever think anything is perfect, but because I’m always more interested in what is coming next.’

Elaborating on his compositional technique, he added: ‘It’s as if the whole of the piece is there in your imagination. As soon as you sit down [to write] the idea fades and the interpretation takes over, so it becomes something else, for example if you imagine a place you haven’t been to … the idea of it grows in your head, and then when you go there that vision is replaced by reality.’

Birtwistle began his musical studies as a clarinettist, having played in the military band in his home town of Accrington before taking up a place at what was then the Royal Manchester, now Royal Northern College of Music. He was close friends with his contemporaries Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr, and joined them, trumpeter Elgar Howarth and pianist John Ogdon in setting up the New Music Manchester group to explore the works of early 20th-century composers and also the newer music coming out of Paris and Darmstadt; but it was not until he had completed a postgraduate course in performance at the Royal Academy of Music and two years’ national service with the Band of the Royal Artillery that he sold his clarinets and concentrated on his career as a composer.

A Harkness Scholarship to Princeton, USA enabled him to complete Punch and Judy, the first of his seven operas, and he also spent several formative years as musical director of the newly-established National Theatre. His substantial catalogue includes both large-scale orchestral works and numerous pieces for chamber ensemble, but even his more abstract music often has a consciously theatrical or dramatic element.

Daniel Norman recalls being intrigued by Birtwistle’s music long before he had a chance to perform it: ‘I saw his opera Yan Tan Tethera on TV when I was quite young, I didn’t quite know what I was seeing or hearing but I was fascinated by it; then I went to see The Second Mrs Kong at Glyndebourne and thought it was amazing; and then I saw the second, shorter version of Gawain and the Green Knight at the Royal Opera House, and it was unlike anything else I had experienced before – or since!’

Norman has sung the role of Judas in The Last Supper with the London Sinfonietta and with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He has also performed in Yan Tan Tethera with the Britten Sinfonia. Did Birtwistle write gratefully for the voice?

‘Yes, I would say so, I find it technically easier than some Mozart or Beethoven. He writes long, arching lines, and the best way to approach them is to take a lyrical, classical approach. His music is quite hard to learn, especially if you try to just learn it in your head and then sing it. There are no short cuts; you have to really sing it into the body. But once it’s there, it’s really gratifying to perform.

Above: Daniel Norman (centre) singing the role of Judas in The Last Supper Photo: Alex Woodward BBC

Above: The Mask of Orpheus Photos: Alastair Muir / English National Opera

‘I was delighted to be asked if I would consider the part in The Mask of Orpheus; I was never likely to say no, but I did feel I needed to go into the Bodleian Library first and look at the score, think about the orchestration and work out how it would suit my voice.

‘It was fine, but learning it was a slow process, because you have to know the music really well so that when you come to perform it you can really concentrate on the text. Even if it is going to be difficult for someone hearing the piece for the first time to understand what’s going on, as the performer you have to know why the character is saying something and how it will affect the other characters. Sometimes that will mean finding a motivation that is nowhere near what Harry’s thoughts were or what the librettist intended when the piece was written.’

Did Birtwistle get closely involved with the details of a production, or did he just hand over the score to the company and let the producer and performers sort it out?

‘He never interfered,’ says Norman. ‘He would happily answer questions, and he would come to a lot of rehearsals; it was always fantastic to have him there. He would never say, “no, this means this, you don’t understand”, but if you asked him a question he would do his best to answer it. I had a great chat with him once about how to approach the role of Orpheus the Myth, because it’s hard to “play” a concept. I wanted to find some sort of character in the part, with thoughts and intentions. Harry and I sat down with the score and I was able to bounce ideas off him, and he was open to that. He had confidence in what he had done, but he was never prescriptive.’

At a time when contemporary classical music receives so little public attention, it was pleasing to see how much space and time were devoted to tributes to Birtwistle in newspapers and on broadcast media when his death was announced. No doubt this was partly because he was held in such regard by the music profession, but also because of the notoriety he achieved when his saxophone concerto Panic was included in the Last Night of the Proms in 1995 and broadcast together with the popular second-half works on BBC One. A huge audience was taken by surprise by a musical style which many found alien, abrasive and much too loud, and the BBC switchboard received many complaints.

But for Birtwistle’s many fans, much of his music is characterised by beauty and delicacy. Daniel Norman says the passages that come to mind for him are slow-moving and lyrical, ‘quite serene, actually, and all the more so because of the violence of some of the louder stuff’.

Hearing snatches of the music on the day he died, Gillian Moore, Head of Music at the Southbank Centre, who knew Birtwistle very well, posted on Facebook that she was ‘caught off guard by how much it haunts and moves me: the opening of Secret Theatre and Silbury Air, the end of The Mask of Orpheus, Earth Dances. Even the snatch of Panic they played on the news to illustrate the shock factor was one of those long, haunting melodic lines with machines twittering around it which, for me, seemed like glorious simplicity at that moment.

‘Knowing Harry made life more vivid,’ she added. ‘Going to an exhibition with him and seeing it through his eyes, talking about his garden or the exact balance of paint colours that he’d created in his house, or about poetry or popular films and TV; and specially about food. He had great, simple taste in many things and was creative in many aspects of life beyond music.’

Sir Harrison Birtwistle, composer

b. Accrington, Lancashire, 15 July 1943 d. Mere, Wiltshire, 18 April 2022 Birtwistle was one of the leading European figures in contemporary music, whose works combined a modernist aesthetic with mythic power and emotional impact. He took his inspiration from contemporary art and the rituals of classical mythology and pre-history. Orchestral works of recent decades included The Shadow of Night commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra; The Moth Requiem, for 12 sopranos, three harps and alto flute, premiered by the Netherlands Chamber Choir; and concertos for violinist Christian Tetzlaff and pianist PierreLaurent Aimard. Stage works included The Last Supper for Glyndebourne, The Minotaur for The Royal Opera, The Io Passion, The Corridor and The Cure. Birtwistle won the 1986 Grawemeyer Award, 1995 Siemens Prize and 2015 Wihuri Sibelius Prize. Noted conductors of his music included Boulez, Howarth, Eötvös, Knussen, Rattle, Dohnányi, Barenboim and Pappano.

With thanks to his publisher, Boosey & Hawkes boosey.com/composer/Harrison+Birtwistle

Right: Duets in a Frame Photo: Jack Woodhouse / London Sinfonietta