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Sir Harrison Paul Birtwistle CH (born July 15, 1934) is generally considered to be one of Britain's most significant contemporary composers.
Birtwistle was born in Accrington in Lancashire and in 1952 entered the Royal Manchester College of Music in Manchester on a clarinet scholarship. While there he met fellow composers Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr, who together with pianist John Ogdon and conductor Elgar Howarth formed the New Music Manchester group, dedicated to the performances of serial and other modern works.
Birtwistle left the college in 1955, then studied at the Royal Academy of Music and afterward made a living as a schoolteacher. In 1965 a Harkness Fellowship gave him the opportunity to continue his studies in the United States and he decided to dedicated himself to composition.
In 1975 Birtwistle became musical director of the newly-established Royal National Theatre in London, a post he held until 1988. From 1994 to 2001 he was Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at King's College London.
Birtwistle's music
Birtwistle's pieces are in a complex, modernistic style. His early work is sometimes evocative of Igor Stravinsky and Olivier Messiaen (composers he has acknowledged as influences) and his technique of juxtaposing blocks of sound is sometimes compared to Edgard Varèse. His music makes frequent use of ostinatos and often has a ritualistic feel.
Among Birtwistle's better-known pieces is the first work he is happy to acknowledge, the wind quintet Refrains and Choruses (1957); the piano pieces Harrison's Clocks (1998); the orchestral works The Triumph of Time (1971) and Earth Dances (1986); and the operas Punch and Judy (1967), The Mask of Orpheus (1984, for which Birtwistle won the 1987 Grawemeyer Award in Music Composition), Gawain (1990), The Second Mrs Kong (1994) and The Last Supper (2000).
Birtwistle gained some notoriety in 1995 when his piece Panic for drum kit, alto saxophone and orchestra, was premièred at that year's Last Night of the Proms. His music had not previously been heard in so public a forum and most of the press did not hold back its negative criticism of the piece; traditionally the concert features mainstream, popular and patriotic music.