The Music of Harrison Birtwistle

Music in the Twentieth Century

by Robert Adlington

Harrison Birtwistle (1934- ) is one of the most eminent and acclaimed of contemporary British composers. This is the first book to provide a comprehensive view of his large and varied output, containing descriptions of every published work, and also a number of withdrawn and unpublished pieces. The book is structured around a number of broad themes--theater, song, time and texture--themes of significance to Birtwistle, but also to much other music. This approach avoids in-depth technical analysis, and Dr. Adlington focuses instead on the music's wider cultural significance.

Genres: Music

258 pages, Hardcover

First published March 30, 2000

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The turn of the millenium saw three major surveys of Harrison Birtwistle's work to date, Michael Hall's Harrison Birtwistle in Recent Years, Jonathan Cross's Harrison Birtwistle: Man, Mind and Music and finally this book by Robert Adlington. The Music of Harrison Birtwistle went to press too late for Adlington to take much of Cross's book into account, and he to some degree ends up duplicating the organization of the earlier book. Both authors eschew a chronological account of Birtwistle's oeuvre for a look at the various concepts that fascinate Birtwistle and the pieces associated with each concept, and both are writing for an audience with some understanding of theory (fragments from the scores about).

In Adlington's case, we get the following seven chapters broken down into subthemes:

1. Theatres: Violence, Myth, Music and drama, Narratives and rituals

2. Roles: Dramatic protagonists, Ceremonial actors, Negotiated identities, Soloists

3. Texts: Narration, Fragment, Phone (the Greek word for "voice" with macrons over the vowel), Expression

4. Times: Time, Pulse, Journeys

5. Sections: Verse, Fragment, Context

6. Layers: Melody, Polyphony, Strata

7. Audiences (the shortest chapter, and little more than an account of the "Panic at the Proms" scandal)

When I first got this book, I felt rather lost without a chronological presentation of the works, and unlike Cross's book, Adlington doesn't even give a little biographical sketch of Birtwistle's formative years in Manchester. One has to already know something about Harrison Birtwistle and his music to find one's bearings here.

Eventually, however, I knew enough about the composer to finally work my way through The Music of Harrison Birtwistle, and I find it an important resource. Adlington tries to cover every work, even unpublished or withdrawn pieces. This revealed that Birtwistle's oeuvre is much vaster than I imagined, but little has been recorded, and of what has been recorded, much is out of print. Without this book, I would have no idea of many interesting pieces.

Adlington's commentary is very helpful towards seeing what makes Birtwistle tick and getting more out of the pieces. There's not a single Birtwistle piece that I own in recording that I don't appreciate more after reading this book. (That's not to say I like everything, though!) A second edition would be very welcome, but for anything up to Pulse Shadows, this is a great guide.