AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Contemporary Classical

b. 1934 English composer Birtwistle, member as a student of the Manchester New Music Group, says his juvenilia are pastiche Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958). Study with Richard Hall opened his ears to Stravinsky, Webern and Varèse, altering his musical style radically. In many ways his music is utterly individual; Birtwistle has said that he was driven to ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

b. 1934, English Uniquely gifted amongst contemporary English composers, Birtwistle first made a splash on the opera scene with the acclaimed Punch and Judy (1968). Centring around the murderous activities of Punch, the work distinguished itself through a lack of straightforward narrative, repeating the story several times from numerous different perspectives. Musically evoking the traditions of the ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical

IRCAM in Paris is an important centre for advanced music computing and many composers, including Berio, have used its facilities. For his opera The Mask of Orpheus, Birtwistle and his collaborator Barry Anderson used the IRCAM computer to construct six taped inserts for use in performance, transforming notes originally played on a harp into enormous percussion sounds ...

• Instruments
• Woodwind

Milhaud’s (1892–1974) La Création du monde and Strauss’s Symphonia domestica. The late-twentieth century saw a resurgence in the orchestral saxophone’s popularity; it has been used by composers such as Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934), Mark-Anthony Turnage (b. 1960) and John Adams (b. 1947) to great effect. A Versatile Instrument The saxophone is perhaps one of the most flexible of instruments in terms ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Conductor
• Contemporary Classical
• Instrumentalist

b. 1959 English conductor and pianist Born in England to Italian parents, he studied in the US, working as assistant conductor at the New York City Opera and in Europe (including at Bayreuth). While music director of Norwegian Opera 1990–92 and La Monnaie, Brussels 1992–2002 he made distinguished debuts at Berlin, Vienna and the Met. He was ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

the Trouble in Tahiti characters (and much of the music) for A Quiet Place (1983) was altogether less credible and compelling. Introduction | Modern Era | Opera Personalities | Harrison Birtwistle | Modern Era | Opera Techniques | Operetta | Turn of the Century | Opera ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Contemporary Classical

Place’, 1998–99). Recommended Recording: Sinfonia, Canticum Novissimi Testamenti II, Electric Phoenix, Orchestre de Paris (cond) Semyon Bychkov (Philips/Decca) Introduction | Contemporary | Classical Personalities | (Sir) Harrison Birtwistle | Contemporary | Classical ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical

now. The vast array of voices on which to draw has resulted in there being an enormous range of styles among contemporary composers. In the UK the music of Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934) unites lyrical beauty with a stark rhythmic energy, and Peter Maxwell Davies (b. 1934) has, throughout his career, made frequent, sometimes highly ironic, ...

• Classical
• Contemporary Classical

hybrid genre came to be described, attracted not only Ligeti, Kagel and Luciano Berio (1925–2003), but also the American George Crumb (b. 1929) and the British composers Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934) and Peter Maxwell Davies (b. 1934). Music in the ‘Global Village’ The pluralism in evidence in the late 1960s and early 70s was a harbinger of the extreme ...

• Influences
• Classical
• Medieval Era

interested in the fourteenth-century technique of hocket and in the harmonic experiments of the Italian composer Carlo Gesualdo (c. 1561–1613). Hocket has since inspired many composers, both modernist (Harrison Birtwistle, b. 1934, for instance, in his Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum, 1984) and minimalist (Louis Andriessen, b. 1939: Hocketus). The canonic processes of Ockeghem find their ...

• Classical
• Contemporary Classical

of imagination; a theatricality closer to contemporary drama than to opera; sometimes the use of non-operatic voices and venues; and an insistence on the importance of text. In Britain, Birtwistle and Davies formed the Pierrot Players, named for Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire (they later became The Fires of London, after Birtwistle had left) in 1967 as a conduit for ...

• Arts & Culture
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical

ways: one of the more surprising developments of the 1990s was the emergence of the Rex Foundation, set up to sponsor performances and recordings of complex contemporary scores (of Birtwistle, Carter, Ferneyhough and others) by members of the rock band The Grateful Dead. Introduction | Contemporary | Classical Arts & Culture | Librettists | Contemporary | Classical ...

• Arts & Culture
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical

Penderecki. For the most part, though, the job of librettist has gone to poets or playwrights. Among the former, notable contributors have been Tony Harrison (librettos for Birtwistle and Jacob Druckman), Paavo Haavikko (two for Sallinen), and Alice Goodman (two for Adams); while the playwright Edward Bond has written two librettos for Henze. Arts & Culture | Literature ...