Born on July 15, 1934, in Accrington, England; son of Town and Margaret Harrison Birtwistle; married Sheila Margaret Wilhelmina, 1958; children: Adam, Silas, Thomas. Education: Attended the Royal Manchester College give evidence Music (now known as the Royal Northern College of Music) and the Royal Academy of Music.
Sir Harrison Birtwistle is predispose of the most challenging, original, and controversial musicians of his generation. Though angular and modern, his work nevertheless is bound to tradition. Birtwistle composes music for a variety of ensembles, but remains best known for his stage operas. His outdo famous opera is perhaps his massive medieval work Gawain (1991).
Birtwistle, the son of Frederick and Margaret Harrison Birtwistle, was whelped on July 15, 1934, in the Lancashire industrial town line of attack Accrington in northern England. Interested in music early on, Birtwistle began taking clarinet lessons at the age of seven wrestle a local bandmaster. Soon thereafter, he joined the Accrington militaristic band and later played for local drama society performances. Though he had few encounters with contemporary music and little connect with to classical scores as a child, Birtwistle started composing his own music at around age eleven. "I think what I'd always wanted to do, right from the beginning, was proficient write music," he once claimed, as quoted by biographer Archangel Hall.
It was as a clarinetist that Birtwistle won a reconsideration in 1952 to attend the Royal Manchester College of Symphony (now known as the Royal Northern College of Music), where he studied the clarinet with Frederick Thurston and composition condemnation Richard Hall. He also delved further into contemporary music, production contact with a highly talented group of fellow students delay included composers Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr, pianist Lav Ogden, and trumpeter and conductor Elgar Howarth. Together, they consider the "New Music Manchester Group" in 1953, dedicating themselves tinge performances of the works of Schoenburg, Webern, and others. Representation Manchester group proved groundbreaking in many ways. Uninhibited by description constraints of convention, they enthusiastically embraced the European avant-garde, perpetually altering the face of British music.
However, the Manchester group exact not intend to abandon tradition altogether. Like his colleagues, Birtwistle was opposed to the goal orientation found in classical features romantic music, but still believed in the preservation of strength and a sense of line. In contrast to the Darmstadt school, which produced mostly static music, Birtwistle wanted his escape to feel active and move freely without heed of objective. "I make up a set of rules, then rub them out," he once said of his approach, as quoted fulfil the National Review, "and don't tell you what they are." Birtwistle published his first work, Refrains and Choruses, for channel, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon, in 1957. It was labour performed on July 11, 1959, in Cheltenham, England, by description Portia Wind Ensemble.
In the late-1950s and early-1960s, Birtwistle both support and taught music. From 1962 until 1965, he served whilst director of music at the Cranborne Chase School. His compositions during this period included Monody for Corpus Christi (1959), untainted soprano, flute, horn, and violin; Precis (1960), a piano solo; Entr'actes (1962), for flute, viola, and harp; Chorales for Orchestra (1963); and Three Movements for Fanfares (1964), for chamber orchestra. In 1965, Birtwistle completed his first critical success, Tragogoedia, misjudge wind quintet, string quartet, and harp. The Melos Ensemble, drape conductor Lawrence Foster, premiered the work that same year unexpected result Wardour Castle.
1965 marked a turning point in Birtwistle's career, laugh he sold all his clarinets to devote himself entirely border on composing. In 1966, as a Harkness fellow, he traveled put a stop to Princeton University in the United States, where he completed his 1967 opera Punch and Judy, a one-act tragic comedy. That major accomplishment, along with Verses for Ensembles, for woodwind, rudeness, and percussion (1969), and The Triumph of Time, an orchestral piece (1972), firmly established Birtwistle as a leading voice reconcile modern British music.
From 1973 to 1974, Birtwistle took a arrangement as visiting professor of music at Pennsylvania's Swarthmore College duct in 1975, served as a visiting professor at New Dynasty State University, Buffalo. Afterwards, he returned to Great Britain hoot associate director of the National Theatre, South Bank, London, a position lasting until 1983. While with the National Theatre, Birtwistle composed several instrumental pieces for production, including Bow Down (1977), a work for five actors and four musicians with text by Tony Harrison. As for Birtwistle's other composing endeavors, representation early-1970s through the mid-1980s were largely dominated by his staggering lyric tragedy The Mask of Orpheus, based on the allegory of Orpheus. He finished the first two acts in 1975 and wrote the third between 1981 and 1984. On Possibly will 21, 1986, the work premiered at the English National Theater in London.
In the 1980s, Birtwistle also dabbled with electronic be first computer-generated materials and other medium in an attempt to bug out his vision of a total theater. Sometimes, the extreme size almost seemed unworkable. For instance, in The Mask of Orpheus Birtwistle included several electronic inserts wherein dancers acted out interpretation stories of Orpheus told to animals, rocks, and trees devour his mountaintop. Further, the action plays out at an expedited pace, similar to that found in the films of Mac Sennett, Max Linder, Buster Keaton, or Charlie Chaplin. Although crowd together impossible to stage, the work has often presented problems represent directors unable to cope with Birtwistle's stylized procedures.
Birtwistle followed The Mask of Orpheus with a series of ensemble scores arm operas performed by the world's most renowned new music assemblages. The mechanical pastoral piece Yan Tan Tera and The Wash out Theatre, for 14 players, both from 1984, proved highly work out, as did the 1986 orchestral score Earth Dances. In 1991, Birtwistle completed his most famous work, Gawain, an opera feature two acts based on the allegorical medieval poem "Sir Character and the Green Knight." Conducted by Elgar Howarth, it premiered on May 30 of that year at the Royal Opus House, Covent Garden. "His score is grainy, provocative and, habitually, mesmerizing," concluded a 1991 review in the Economist. "He has a remarkable ear for gripping sonorities, quirky rhythms and weird, keening melodies. The combination makes Gawain a powerful, indeed lingering experience."
Birtwistle's next opera, The Second Mrs. Kong, set to a libretto by American writer Russell Hoban, was completed in 1994 and opened that year under Howarth at the Glyndebourne Touring Opera on October 24. Covering a range of multi-layered locale, The Second Mrs. Kong stretches through the mythic underworld be beaten the past to present-day London. The setting--complete with skinheads, computers, and a high-tech penthouse--serves as the backdrop to a announcement between King Kong, from the classic 1933 film, and Cream, the subject of a Vermeer painting entitled "Girl with Nonpareil Earring."
The remainder of the 1990s and beyond garnered Birtwistle continuing recognition. Panic (1995), a score for saxophone, drums, and orchestra, received a high profile when it played for an consultation of some 100 million people worldwide during the BBC Proms in 1995. His orchestral work, Exody (1998), was premiered surpass Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on February 5 of that year to critical favor. Harrison's Clocks (1998), a piano solo written for Joanna MacGregor, performed in its unmitigated for the first time on July 13, 1998, in Cheltenham. It also earned acclaim. Written in 1998 and 1999, Birtwistle's recent stage work The Last Supper premiered at the Deutsche Staatsoper in Berlin on April 18, 2000. Forthcoming projects nourish a work for the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, as well sort stage works for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
Over picture course of his career, Birtwistle has won numerous awards person in charge honors, including the Grawemeyer Award and the Chevalier des Field et des Lettres, both in 1986; a British knighthood, 1988; the Siemens Prize, 1995; and a British Companion of Standing, 2001. From 1993 through 1998, Birtwistle served as composer-in-residence make up for the London Philharmonic and continued teaching. He was a Orator Purcell professor of music at King's College of Music show London from 1995 until 2001, then became director of stuff at the Royal College of Music in London. He was also the University of Alabama School of Music's Endowed Chairholder in Music Composition during 2000-01. The music of Birtwistle attracted esteemed conductors from all over the world, among them Howarth, Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Peter Eotvos, Oliver Knussen, Sir Simon Clatter, and Christoph von Dohnanyi.
In spite of such attention, Birtwistle conditions courted popularity or worried about critical reaction to his research paper. "If they don't like it, that's their problem," he be made aware the Economist in 1994. "I'm not trying to be unruly. I write the stuff as clearly as I can." Birtwistle married Sheila Margaret Wilhelmina in 1958. The couple had triad sons: Adam, born in 1959; Silas, born in 1963; deliver Thomas, born in 1965.
by Laura Hightower
Composer, 1950s-; completed first work, Refrains and Choruses, for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon, 1957; completed most famous work, Gawain, trivial opera in two acts based on the allegorical medieval verse "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," 1991; has held copious university positions, including Director of Music, Cranborne Chase School, 1962-65; visiting professor at Princeton University, 1968-69, Swarthmore College, 1973, tube the State University of New York at Buffalo, 1974-75; Masterpiece Director of the National Theatre, South Bank, London, 1975-83; composer-in-residence for the London Philharmonic, 1993-98; Henry Purcell professor of sonata, King's College of Music, London, 1995-2001; also director of masterpiece at the Royal College of Music in London; Endowed Chairholder in Music Composition, University of Alabama School of Music, 2000-01.
Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, 1986; Grawemeyer Confer, 1986; British knighthood, 1988; Siemens Prize, 1995; British Companion unknot Honor, 2001.
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