Harrison Birtwistle 80

[Quarky]

I heard his violin concerto at the Proms a few years ago with some pleasure but not when I've listened again and nothing else has ever touched me at all. Heard Gawain and Yan Tan Tethera at the Barbican this spring. YTT left me cold and Gawain was positively tiring. All those monosyllabic sung notes and a ponderous libretto. It was an hilariously 'unfortunate' semi-staging (though well-sung by Leigh Melrose and characterfully-acted by John Tomlinson) but the lumpen monotony of the music it was that failed. I suspect he won't be played any more often than Tippett after he dies. I wonder if Maxwell Davies will be played at all?

Wonder if you concentrated on the parts of Birtwistle you do enjoy, rather than the parts you don't, you might make progress with this composer? I thought your first post raised some intelligent points, based upon actual attendance at concerts. And your views were given comprehensive answers by the experts. But since then matters have gone downhill.

If there is a composer you don't enjoy, then put him to one side. But if you feel like persevering, sometimes you think you are wasting your time listening, but in fact there is progress, although you may not realise it at the time. Did you listen to Harrison/ Tom Service on Hear and Now the other day - may be still on iPlayer? There was some great music there.

[Blotto]

If "entertain" is taken at its etymological meaning (something that "enters" and "holds" the imagination) - then I would say that that is an exact definition of "good Art"

To interest, to cheer, to move, to stimulate, to occupy, to intimate, to spiritualise. Yes, all these things are (sometimes simultaneous) aspects of entertainment, I would say.

[Blotto]

Wonder if you concentrated on the parts of Birtwistle you do enjoy, rather than the parts you don't, you might make progress with this composer? I thought your first post raised some intelligent points, based upon actual attendance at concerts. And your views were given comprehensive answers by the experts. But since then matters have gone downhill.

If there is a composer you don't enjoy, then put him to one side. But if you feel like persevering, sometimes you think you are wasting your time listening, but in fact there is progress, although you may not realise it at the time. Did you listen to Harrison/ Tom Service on Hear and Now the other day - may be still on iPlayer? There was some great music there.

Thank you for your suggestions, I will persevere.

[Beef Oven!]

Thank you for your suggestions, I will persevere.

I always loved 'Earth Dances' but I found much of his music nearly impossible. I really tried with the 6 or so CDs I had bought on reading interesting Grammophone/Penguin reviews. I put him aside and returned once a year for ages. Nothing doing!

Then one day it all changed. Can't say why. I'm very fond of all his music these days.

Not very helpful to you, I suppose, but there you are.

[Blotto]

... if you feel like persevering, sometimes you think you are wasting your time listening, but in fact there is progress, although you may not realise it at the time.

I always loved 'Earth Dances' but I found much of his music nearly impossible. I really tried with the 6 or so CDs I had bought on reading interesting Gramophone/Penguin reviews. I put him aside and returned once a year for ages. Nothing doing!

Then one day it all changed. Can't say why. I'm very fond of all his music these days.

In fact, today I came to Tragoedia from 1965 and found it much more approachable. The off-balance rhythm was very clear in some sections where I find propulsive rhythm undetectable in the later work I've heard. The music's still discordant, of course, but the harmony is less diffuse so that there's some 'body' to the piece. There was interest and some obscure pleasure to be had from it. It's a piece I'd recommend as a starting point to others because however uncharacteristic it may be, it's comparatively easily grasped.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

In fact, today I came to Tragoedia from 1965 and found it much more approachable. The off-balance rhythm was very clear in some sections where I find propulsive rhythm undetectable in the later work I've heard. The music's still discordant, of course, but the harmony is less diffuse so that there's some 'body' to the piece. There was interest and some obscure pleasure to be had from it. It's a piece I'd recommend as a starting point to others because however uncharacteristic it may be, it's comparatively easily grasped.

One of my favourite pieces (and I, too, much prefer it to Night's Black Bird - although I'm more enthusiastic about that work than you are). I'd recommend Verses for Ensembles next, if you want to explore further. (Astonishingly, not available on youTube. But you might enjoy this ten minute scherzo even more):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiLAZ6D2iYU

[Blotto]

One of my favourite pieces (and I, too, much prefer it to Night's Black Bird - although I'm more enthusiastic about that work than you are). I'd recommend Verses for Ensembles next, if you want to explore further. (Astonishingly, not available on youTube. But you might enjoy this ten minute scherzo even more):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiLAZ6D2iYU

Thanks for the suggestion. It's heartening to hear humour in the music - surely he's remembering Pop goes the weasel? Listening tonight, I hear Messaien again. In Tragoedia, in the very last notes of Strophe I, the cello seems to be singing from the End of Time quartet. In the Carmen piece, at about 3' 50" it's the raving of Turangalila's Sang des etoiles. In both pieces, I thought I heard Michael Tippett but I might be imagining it. Is Birtwistle allusive? The Cry of Anubis opens with something that reminded me very much of the Passacaglia from Peter Grimes.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

surely he's remembering Pop goes the weasel?

- you are absolutely right!

Listening tonight, I hear Messaien again. In Tragoedia, in the very last notes of Strophe I, the cello seems to be singing from the End of Time quartet. In the Carmen piece, at about 3' 50" it's the raving of Turangalila's Sang des etoiles.

One of Birtwistle's formative experiences as a young composer (and one that he frequently talks about) is going to the Royal Festival Hall with Alexander Goehr to attend rehearsals conducted by Goehr's father for the first performance in the UK of Turangalila. Getting out of the RFH lift, the first thing they hear is the percusssion section practising their part in the Second movement - overlapping patterns producing Music of a sort HB hadn't imagined before, and in his John Tusa interview he says he played Clarinet in a student performance of the Quartet. So allusions to Messiaen aren't surprising; I've always preferred Birtwistle's Music to Messiaen's (dry white wine in preferrence to very sweet sherry) - and I hear Varese (in particular the Octet) and Xenakis more in these works from the '60s. Tippett? Yes - the Second Piano Sonata, the Concerto for Orchestra, King Priam: possibly more of a Sixties thing than a direct influence? Not sure about Britten, though - except that, now you mention it, the opening of the 'cello Symphony and that of Anubis ... hmm ...

It also came as a surprise to me (although, in retrospect, it shouldn't) that Birtwistle received advice and encouragement as a student composer at the RAM from ... Vaughan Williams. Now there's a PhD dissertation waiting to be written! (Harrison Birtwistle and the Vision of Albion?)

But I love this Music so that the influences are absorbed into the whole for me (just as Haydn and Mozart are centre and absence of Beethoven's Music) - it just sounds like Birtwistle. There's a performance of Silbury Air on youTube somewhere: highly recommended!

[Roehre]

...
One of Birtwistle's formative experiences as a young composer (and one that he frequently talks about) is going to the Royal Festival Hall with Alexander Goehr to attend rehearsals conducted by Goehr's father for the first performance in the UK of Turangalila. Getting out of the RFH lift, the first thing they hear is the percusssion section practising their part in the Second movement - overlapping patterns producing Music of a sort HB hadn't imagined before, and in his John Tusa interview he says he played Clarinet in a student performance of the Quartet. So allusions to Messiaen aren't surprising; I've always preferred Birtwistle's Music to Messiaen's (dry white wine in preferrence to very sweet sherry) - and I hear Varese (in particular the Octet) and Xenakis more in these works from the '60s. Tippett? Yes - the Second Piano Sonata, the Concerto for Orchestra, King Priam: possibly more of a Sixties thing than a direct influence? Not sure about Britten, though - except that, now you mention it, the opening of the 'cello Symphony and that of Anubis ... hmm ...

It also came as a surprise to me (although, in retrospect, it shouldn't) that Birtwistle received advice and encouragement as a student composer at the RAM from ... Vaughan Williams. Now there's a PhD dissertation waiting to be written! (Harrison Birtwistle and the Vision of Albion?)

But I love this Music so that the influences are absorbed into the whole for me (just as Haydn and Mozart are centre and absence of Beethoven's Music) - it just sounds like Birtwistle. There's a performance of Silbury Air on youTube somewhere: highly recommended!
In both pieces, I thought I heard Michael Tippett but I might be imagining it.

Many thanks FHG and Blotto for these postings, I was aware I heard something familiar, but couldn't really put the finger to it.
that Messiaen/Goehr incident was completely new to me

[Serial_Apologist]

My impression of Birtwistle's relationship to past English composers is that he has often been more open-minded than his Manchester contemporaries, reminding me of Tippett's frank confession in the 1960s of his admiration for Vaughan Williams and what he regarded him as having done for English music; HB even selected a passage from one of the Elgar symphonies in his Desert Island Discs choices, saying with undisguised respect that Elgar had been the one composer born in this country to have mastered sonata form. Maybe he kept his head down at the time when such opinions weren't seen by opinion shapers as worth consideration.

[Richard Barrett]

Verses for Ensembles, which was the first Birtwistle piece I heard, has always struck me as highly Messiaenesque. Otherwise, the Tippett connection (particularly from the Concerto for Orchestra/King Priam period) is often to be heard in his work I think. Maybe the influence even went both ways - the opening of Tippett's Third Symphony sounds to me like the work of someone who'd been impressed by Birtwistle.

[jayne lee wilson]

Still time to hear a brilliant performance of Birtwistle's Endless Parade from Hardenberger/LCO/Storgards on Proms Saturday Matinee 2 (09/08)... still amazed that no-one else seems to have bothered with it. "Where is everyone?" etc...

Verses for Ensembles is in PSM4 on 06/09...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Verses for Ensembles, which was the first Birtwistle piece I heard, has always struck me as highly Messiaenesque.

The way the Music is put together, yes (particularly those works from the late '50s and early '60s which are those by Messiaen that I respond to most enthusiastically; and the section titles of Tragoedia suggest someone who's encountered those of Chronochromie) - but I prefer the sheer sound and and chutzpah of Birtwistle's Music. And its variety - the way Birtwistle has equal command of materials whether they're used with aggression, delicacy, melancholy, comedy, wit or "pessimism" (wrong word, I think - "stoicism" any better?). This is why I think he's the greatest British composer since Byrd.

Otherwise, the Tippett connection (particularly from the Concerto for Orchestra/King Priam period) is often to be heard in his work I think. Maybe the influence even went both ways - the opening of Tippett's Third Symphony sounds to me like the work of someone who'd been impressed by Birtwistle.

Because I've known the Tippett Third for longer than I've known Birtwistle, I only hear Tippett in the work* (I can just about deduce the Boulez Pli selon pli "influence" that Tippett admitted to). Maybe it was "just" a sixties (/early seventies) thing?

* - well, and Beethoven, too, obviously.

[Quarky]

We don't appear to have had an analysis of Moth Requiem as yet?

I guess it was an original piece - a rare quality. But looking for influences, it seemed to start as a conventional serial-type band, but with the sonorities of the choir, I found myself thinking of Stravinsky's choral works.

Has HB returned to his more lyrical earlier works, and has left his carniverous/ angry phase of Minotour, Angel fighter?

[Richard Barrett]

I only hear Tippett in the work

Well, it's a very original work to be sure. And, while I'm here, can I just say how greatly underrated I think Tippett's music is.

Some years ago there was a little festival at the SBC which combined Birtwistle's music with other pieces chosen by him. Most of his choices were fairly predictable, as I remember (and none the worse for that) but among the more surprising items was Stockhausen's Kontra-Punkte (in which the pianist was a certain Michael Finnissy).

As for Endless Parade, Jayne, for me that's one of the Birtwistle pieces that I find rather bland and in fact somewhat annoying. I must arrange to hear this Moth Requiem some time though.