# Harrison Birtwistle At 80



## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Roderic Dunnett interviews Harrison Birtwistle in the May issue of _'Opera Now'_ magazine... A couple excerpts:



> "In his epic, often dense and descriptive musical response to poetic texts, Birtwistle is sometimes compared to Richard Wagner. Has Wagner exerted a conscious influence on him? *'Well I've never consciously thought I'm taking over the mantle of Wagner. That would be stupid!'* admits the composer. *'But the answer's yes: the use of a long musical line is part of it; there's also the myth ingredient; and of course the other remarkable thing Wagner invented, or mastered, was the Leitmotif. I really couldn't do that, but one's aware of it.'*
> 
> [....]
> 
> *'I love Harry's music absolutely,'* says Stephen Langridge, unequivocally. *'It moves me, and has given me some of my most exciting moments in the theatre.* 'Harry has a theatrical aesthetic. He has a kind of Cubist approach to narrative. It's not about flat storytelling, not merely illustrative: time and again, many layers are going on at the same time. His music allows and aims for the story to be seen from many different angles and perspectives.'


Full article:

Harrison Birtwistle, who turns 80 this year, has left a highly individual mark on the world of opera, throwing light on the shadows of the psyche through a combination of classical myth and English folklore. Roderic Dunnett celebrates the composer's work for the stage over four decades.

The ancient Greeks had words for it. Mythopoeia: the making or fashioning of myths; or perhaps mythologia, the retailing of myths; mythoplastia, the coining of myths; or mythographia, the writing down of myths... Sir Harrison Birtwistle, celebrating his 80th birthday on 15 July this year, is perhaps the great musical mythologist of our time and his works embrace all these definitions of myth making. Many are inspired by the poetic imagination of ancient worlds -- the Green Man of medieval England or the fearsome Minotaur of ancient Crete. Such mystical, larger-than-life figures clearly attract the composer's attention when he goes in search of operatic themes. Ancient Greece has been a particularly fertile source: 'I feel the archetypal aspect of it, I like the sort of primitive background to it,' Birtwistle says, 'the psychological world, the bareness of the characters. All that gives you more space to work in.' Most of those who have worked with him describe Harry (as he's known to friends in the trade) as a 'man of the theatre': someone who exudes dramatic craft; who has the word 'stage' imprinted on his inner being. Indeed from 1975 to 1983, Birtwistle served as musical director to Peter Hall's National Theatre Company (where he first met Alison Chitty, who went on to design many of his operas, including "Gawain" and "The Minotaur").

Writing music for the theatre has two distinct aspects, Birtwistle explains, drawing a distinction between music 'about' the play, and music 'of' the play: 'Music about the play is where you set the atmosphere --like film music. The music of the play is quite different. In "Hamlet", for example, Ophelia's songs represent her madness, her state of mind and her psychology -- a kind of scattiness. It's music prescribed by the writer, things that emanate from within the narrative and its characters.' As for the challenges of moving from theatre to opera, Birtwistle is clear in making the distinction: 'In spoken theatre, a composer is more of an artisan than a true creator: there are more possibilities -- different sorts of production, different attitudes to the spacing of the piece. All that comes from decisions made by the actors and the director. Whereas when you write an opera, there are certain things within the timing of the words and action that are fixed -- you can't alter them'

Birtwistle is more interested than many composers in text, and so I wondered how much input he has in the libretti to his operas -- especially those shaped by the fine poet David Harsent (librettist of "Gawain" and "The Minotaur", and also of his latest two 'chamber' operas "The Corridor" and the forthcoming "The Cure"). 'You know what Auden said? A good libretto should be like a dumb show. In the music, you're expressing a lot of things within the text that can't be spoken or said. David and I are used to batting things to and fro, a bit like a game of tennis: we have a really good rapport, we're singing from the same hymn-sheet as it were, and that can be very productive. Just one example: I remember there's a bit in "The Minotaur" where I said to David, "It's not dark enough: I need more there, make it darker." And he did, he came up with significant changes, and it turned out the best bit in the whole opera -- Antonio Pappano, who was conducting, thought the same!"

In his epic, often dense and descriptive musical response to poetic texts, Birtwistle is sometimes compared to Richard Wagner. Has Wagner exerted a conscious influence on him? 'Well I've never consciously thought I'm taking over the mantle of Wagner. That would be stupid!' admits the composer. 'But the answer's yes: the use of a long musical line is part of it; there's also the myth ingredient; and of course the other remarkable thing Wagner invented, or mastered, was the Leitmotif. I really couldn't do that, but one's aware of it.' When the great English Wagnerian conductor Reginald Goodall heard Birtwistle's "The Mask of Orpheus", he made the same comparison with Wagner. 'That was an important judgment,' says Birtwistle, 'because he above all should know. But for me it's not a conscious thing.' A more significant force in Birtwistle's output has been mediaeval music. 'There are certain pieces, particularly a motet of Machaut (Hoquetus David), which have been with me a long time. The thing about medieval music in the 1950's and 60's was that you were discovering something unfamiliar: nobody really knew it, or knew what it was. 'What fascinates me about Early Music is the arcane aspect of it: like a game of "Snakes and Ladders" where you've lost the rules or instructions. You don't initially perceive what the choices are, the rationale, why one thing follows another, or follows the next. If you listen to a piece of Beethoven, or indeed any 18th or 19th century music, you know almost by rule what's contrasting with this, or echoing that, or what section introduces new material.'

Unlike the earlier operas (though more like "The Io Passion", which was for four singers, two actors and a clarinet quintet), Birtwistle's latest operatic explorations are for distinctly smaller forces. "The Corridor's" for a mixed sextet. Elsewhere, I'm working with a string quartet (The Arditti Quartet, on a new work to be premiered at the Barbican). It's the intimacy that appeals, the intricacy of the detail. And that's why I'm very interested in writing theatrical pieces that are chamber works, more about specific dramatic moments, as here, in the fatal instant where Orpheus looks back at Eurydice.' "The Corridor" (Aldeburgh, 2009) is for just two singers (Elizabeth Atherton and Mark Padmore). 'Now I'm writing another piece for the Royal Opera House which features exactly the same two people: It's called "The Cure": same performers, same group of instruments. It's the second half of "The Corridor", about Medea bringing someone back to life.'

Opera composers need ardent advocates to bring their works to life on the stage. Birtwistle likes to have his regular gang of actors and musicians around him, who understand him and his work. Among his long-term collaborators are director Stephen Langridge and designer Alison Chitty; and his scores are often written for specific people -- above all the bass John Tomlinson who, like Birtwistle, was born and raised near Accringtom in the northwest of England (Harry, by the way, still has the same attractive Lancashire mill-town 'burr', and a surprisingly amiable temperament.) It was seeing Birtwistle's "Punch and Judy", with Omar Ebrahim as a raving Punch, that clinched Stephen Langridge's desire to be a stage director. Inspired, above all, by ENO's 1986 production of "The Mask of Orpheus" (in which his father, the renowned tenor Philip Langridge, sang the central role), he went on ten years after its premiere to direct his own version at the Royal Festival Hall. The young Langridge soaked himself avidly in Birtwistle's music and then, making his opera directing debut, assisted David Freeman on "Yan Tan Thethera" (1986), Birtwistle's supernatural tale of Welsh sheep farmers. Langridge went on to launch "The Io Passion" at Aldeburgh, and more recently staged, to vast acclaim, "The Minotaur" for Convent Garden.

'I love Harry's music absolutely,' says Langridge, unequivocally. 'It moves me, and has given me some of my most exciting moments in the theatre. It was thrilling -- and a little daunting as a novice young assistant to realise one was working with the composer actually there in the room. 'Harry has a theatrical aesthetic. He has a kind of Cubist approach to narrative. It's not about flat storytelling, not merely illustrative: time and again, many layers are going on at the same time. His music allows and aims for the story to be seen from many different angles and perspectives.'

Is there ever any friction between the composer and his creative team? 'Harry's marvellous in rehearsal,' Langridge emphasises, 'because he challenges you: "Why are you doing that?" There's a fabulous comic sense too. In "The Io Passion", the god Zeus, disguised as a bull about to tup Io, turns to the audience and moans "moo". There's comedy in "The Second Mrs Kong" too -- lots of it. And endless variety: hectically fast bits, lullingly slow, daringly complex and blaringly loud bits... As for the idea that Birtwistle is "hard work" for the listener: I don't believe it! And anyway, his operas always seem to sell out!'


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

He's a good composer, though not as imaginative as Ferneyhough.


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

Impressive name though...not quite as impressive as this guy but still good


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