Sir Harrison Birtwistle

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a composer. He makes his living entirely from writing music, even though he doesn't particularly care what people think of it.

Presenter0:37

He was brought up in Lancashire and went to the Royal Manchester School of Music, where he was a founder member with Alexander Gerr and Peter Maxwell Davis of the Manchester New Music Group. Their ambition was to liberate English music from the pastoral tradition, and in his first opera, Punch and Judy, he began to do just that. At its premiere in Alborough, Benjamin Britton walked out.

Presenter0:59

For eight years he oversaw the music for the National Theatre, which included writing the score for Amadeus, which many people attributed to Mozart. His operas, The Mask of Orpheus and Garwain's Journey, have been performed at the ENO to critical acclaim, and he's currently working on another called The Second Mrs. Kong for Gleinborn. He is Sir Harrison Birtwhistle. Is this, Harry, Mrs. Kong as in King Kong?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle1:24

Yes, the same person.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle1:26

And I suppose it's suggesting that the first Mrs. Kong was Fay Ray.

Presenter1:30

Yeah.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle1:30

Maybe. I don't know.

Presenter1:32

And what hap I mean, what's the plot?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle1:34

It's really about the idea of Kong himself, and about how Kong never really existed as a person, but the idea of him, because in the film he only existed as a an eight inch puppet.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle1:50

And yet we all have this sort of feeling about the personality of him.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle1:55

So it's about his identity.

Presenter1:58

Now this is for Gleinbourne, as I said, for the new revamped Gleinbourne next summer.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle1:59

Yeah.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle2:01

Next summer.

Presenter2:03

Obviously, it's not

Sir Harrison Birtwistle2:04

I wonder if they'd like to say revamped. I think they'd like to think that it's rebuilt, wouldn't they? Yes.

Presenter2:08

Yeah. But it's not a classic offering for a a a sort of summer's evening in Sussex with the picnics and the Rolls-Royces and the beautiful dresses. Wh how much do you worry about its reception?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle2:09

But it's not a

Sir Harrison Birtwistle2:20

Well, I can't consider it, as I can't consider anything um to do with who who listens to it. Um I I spend all my time thinking about how I do it, and so therefore I can't really consider you.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle2:36

I have to consider myself.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle2:39

And it's a basic thing that whether you think that

Sir Harrison Birtwistle2:44

You should come to it or I should come to you. And um so it's for me it's it's something you have to come to.

Presenter2:51

The audience must come to you. You would never ever write with a specific audience in mind. That would be.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle2:52

You will

Sir Harrison Birtwistle2:56

But how could I?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle2:58

If you think about it.

Presenter2:59

I'm sure many composers do, don't they?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle3:01

But where do they pitch it? I mean, if you say there's a sliding scale.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle3:05

Where where do you decide to pitch at your level?

Speaker 43:07

Yeah.

Presenter3:07

Hmm.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle3:08

I aim for the stars. I mean, maybe I don't get very far, but that's what I aim for.

Presenter3:13

Tell me then about your music for this desert island. I mean are these eight random choices or is there a theme to them or how

Sir Harrison Birtwistle3:19

Well there's no theme. I have to wear two hats in this case. I have to wear my composer's hat and my music lover's hat. And so consequently there are things here which are not consciously to do with my world as a composer, but my world as a simply as a a music lover.

Presenter3:37

So what's the first one you'll take with you?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle3:39

This is Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, which I have a very tender spot for.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle3:46

And I think it's because I it it was how I started to first think about music not just as a player and to accept it and to think, you know, that's a nice piece and that, um, but there are things in this piece that really for me don't exist in any other piece of classical music.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle5:01

I remember playing that in the orchestra and um one thing that always occurred to me was that

Sir Harrison Birtwistle5:09

that sh I was a clarinet player, and that it's what a pity that Schubert never wrote a clarinet quintet like Mozart and like Brahms. It would have been wonderful.

Presenter5:17

Uh

Presenter5:19

That was the symphony number eight in B minor, The Unfinished. So you were a clarinetist. Did you did you ever earn your living playing the clarinet?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle5:27

Yes I did.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle5:29

I earned more money when I was fourteen or fifteen than I did when I was supposed to be a professional, because I used to play for the amateur um dramatic society, um but um the musicians were paid and uh that was always before Christmas, before the pantomime, and um when it became the pantomime I was asked to stay on, so I used to play the pantomime season which used to go on till the end of of January.

Presenter5:54

So what sort of stuff will you play?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle5:57

Well, what you play for Pantomime is fourth-rate Pantomime in Accrington, and as the season went on the the band got smaller'cause they couldn't afford

Sir Harrison Birtwistle6:06

and it ended up with a trio of which I was one of them.

Presenter6:09

Wasn't it the the leader of the Accrington Town Band who taught you to play the clarinet in the first place?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle6:13

No, he was a clarinet player.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle6:15

He wasn't the leader, he was just one of the clarinet players.

Presenter6:17

And he lived down the road.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle6:19

Yes, he lived in the next street.

Presenter6:21

How did you you were seven at the time, weren't you?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle6:21

How did you do that?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle6:23

When you I was just seven when my

Sir Harrison Birtwistle6:26

When I didn't I don't think I even knew what music was. And um

Presenter6:30

So how did you know you wanted to play the clarinet?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle6:32

I didn't. My mother wanted me to do it, to keep me off the street, she said.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle6:36

I never knew what that meant because I never got onto the streets too much. Maybe it was more interesting on the streets.

Presenter6:42

But your mum, therefore, w did she I mean, did she want you to be a professional musician? She obviously recognised your musical talent, huh?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle6:48

I don't think she recognized my musical talent. Um, I suppose it was like being what mothers

Sir Harrison Birtwistle6:55

I was an ambition, one of her ambitions. I was an only child and um it wa I think the order was t to be a parson or a doctor or to play in the Halley Orchestra. I never achieved any of those.

Presenter7:11

So what sort of stuff did you play? You played Gilbert and Sullivan, didn't you?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle7:16

Everything that military band arrangements, um Victorian ballad music, the sort of thing you hear in the park today, marches.

Presenter7:24

And do you remember what you thought of it?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle7:24

And

Sir Harrison Birtwistle7:27

I didn't think any about anything about it. It was the norm for me.

Presenter7:31

Just stuff called music.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle7:32

It was Sandy Call Music.

Presenter7:32

But

Sir Harrison Birtwistle7:34

But

Sir Harrison Birtwistle7:35

Another sort of music developed in my head.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle7:38

um which was to do with a sort of

Sir Harrison Birtwistle7:41

Creative World.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle7:43

And there was there was no parallel.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle7:47

It just happened to be using the same material with music.

Presenter7:51

Does

Sir Harrison Birtwistle7:52

Notes, but beyond that.

Presenter7:52

But beyond that there was nothing in

Sir Harrison Birtwistle7:54

Well, I wrote music. As soon as I understood notation, I wrote music.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle7:58

But there was no

Sir Harrison Birtwistle8:00

It it didn't seem to have any re resemblance to the other thing that was music, which what I played on my clarinet.

Presenter8:06

Which was the Gilbert and Saliban and Bless the Bride and any old march that came your way.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle8:07

That's right.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle8:09

Yeah.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle8:11

Yeah, this was be long before Bless the Bride.

Presenter8:15

Let's have record number two.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle8:17

This is a piece that everybody knows, is the Mozart clarinet quintet, and I've chosen this.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle8:24

as much for the player as for the piece, and um because it's played by Alan Hacker, and Alan is a very dear friend of mine. And I first met Alan when I went to the Royal Academy in London, um when I came out of National Service.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle8:40

And in a way, he's one of the ingredients of me being a composer professionally, in that when I heard him play, I realized I would never be a clarinet player.

Presenter8:51

Bye.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle8:51

He was so good?

Presenter9:58

Part of the slow movement of Mozart's clarinet quintet in A, played by Alan Hacker and the Salomon String Quartet.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle10:05

I was once sent to Flandidno by the Royal College of Music in Manchester with a string quartet to play this piece and um

Sir Harrison Birtwistle10:16

I don't know whether you know that the clarinetists have two instruments, one in B flat and one in A, and um Mozart wrote his concerto for the clarinet in A, which is a semitone, and the quintet, which is a semitone lower than the B flat clarinet.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle10:30

and I thought I would take only one instrument.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle10:34

So when I arrived there I unduly unpacked my clarinet, and it it turned out that I got half of one and half of the other. Something that always sticks in my mind.

Presenter10:44

It's imp impossible to play.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle10:45

Absolutely.

Presenter10:47

But tell me about uh just let me ask you though about that. You you said that Alan Hacker was such a good clarinetist that you couldn't possibly have gone on being one. But oh, it's not just that, is it? I mean, you also hate performance, don't you? You hate performing in public.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle11:03

Well, I'm not a natural performer, and it's always a big problem for me.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle11:08

When I worked at the National, I think maybe I overcame that with having to deal with people and to deal with actors who are actually nothing but performers. I mean, ostensibly they're they are performing animals, which is the opposite to me. I'm somebody who sits in a room and um fiddles with hieroglyphics.

Presenter11:28

So tell me, let's get back to these noises in your head when you were small. How small were you and can you describe the noises?

Presenter11:35

Probably not. It's probably an impossible question.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle11:37

Well i it's well it's not it was not a self-conscious thing. I can only um tell you in retrospect that looking back I still have this music um and that i I think that it was it's just different to what I played, that's all.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle11:53

And it was always that.

Presenter11:56

But it was it was unrecognizable. It it was music that you have never

Sir Harrison Birtwistle11:58

Die

Sir Harrison Birtwistle11:59

I didn't say that it was unrecognisable. I don't know. This is difficult to talk about, actually.

Presenter12:04

But did it have traditional harmony or did it

Sir Harrison Birtwistle12:06

No.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle12:07

No, it didn't.

Presenter12:08

It was music that was in your mind.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle12:09

Well, I can only I mean I'm I'm talking now about how I understand it, how I've come to try to understand it for myself.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle12:17

Um because when I was given a formal education in music I mean what music really was there was no parallel between the music that I'd written and what I was being taught. I couldn't equate the two things.

Presenter12:29

But you were writing it down at the time.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle12:31

Yeah, sure.

Presenter12:31

How old would you have been then?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle12:34

About nine.

Presenter12:35

Hmm.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle12:35

I think.

Presenter12:36

And did you show it to anybody?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle12:37

Yeah.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle12:38

Never.

Presenter12:38

Never.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle12:39

No. It was a bit like children's drawings or whatever, you know, that's what you did.

Presenter12:43

Have you still got

Sir Harrison Birtwistle12:44

Yeah, I think it's a very good idea.

Presenter12:46

Do you play it?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle12:47

No.

Presenter12:48

Has anybody ever seen?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle12:48

I don't think it was I think it was too abstract to be played. I don't think it was conceived in that way.

Presenter12:54

But even when you went to m to music college, you still didn't actually say, did you? I mean, there there were no lessons in composition, so you couldn't put up your hand and say

Sir Harrison Birtwistle13:01

Put up your hand and say,

Presenter13:06

But did you tell the people you were at at at music school with, you know, did you tell John Ogden and Peter Maxwell Davis? They they knew you composed.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle13:12

Oh, yeah.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle13:14

Yes, yes, but I was not one of the official composers. Alexander Garr and Max were the composers. I was not the composer, I was the clarinetist who was interested in what they did.

Presenter13:25

Hmm.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle13:25

Yeah.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle13:26

Yeah.

Presenter13:27

So they they didn't recognize that you might have something to contribute.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle13:31

Well, maybe they did, but I don't think officially the school did. I bec I was the tortoise.

Presenter13:37

In what sense?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle13:38

Well the tortoise and the hare, you know.

Presenter13:40

You just went along with them, did you? And they just believed that you had shared their sort of avant-garde ideas, but absolutely, yeah.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle13:42

Just because

Sir Harrison Birtwistle13:44

Yeah, so

Sir Harrison Birtwistle13:46

I did. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, it was it was wonderful. It was at the beginning of seemed to be the beginning of musical history.

Presenter13:53

Next record.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle13:55

It's um

Sir Harrison Birtwistle13:57

A piece that I first heard.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle14:00

Long time ago, which is Karlhein Stockhausen's Gruppen for three orchestras. I think that Stockhausen is a major figure.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle14:08

And

Sir Harrison Birtwistle14:09

And I think this piece is extraordinary, and it was written when he was r a very young man, and it's a piece I would like to have written.

Presenter15:08

That was part of Stockhausen's Gruppen for Three Orchestras, conducted by three conductors, Pierre Boulez, Karlhein Stockhausen himself, and Hans Rosbaud.

Presenter15:18

When was it then, Harry Burtwhistle, that you decided you would become a composer? You weren't going to be a clarinetist, you weren't going to do anything else with music, you were going to compose it.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle15:27

Well, I like to think it was a very romantic moment. I went to London with Alexander Gerr, where his father was doing the Tarangalila Symphony for the first time in England.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle15:37

And at the back of the festival hall where it was being performed is a large lift in which they bring the the grand pianos up to the stage level. And I remember it was the first time I'd ever been there.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle15:50

And um and we for some reason we went up in this lift, and as the lift came to stage level I heard part of the triangular symphony, and I like to think that at that moment I'd never heard anything quite like it in that sound world. I thought, well, this is you know, I'm going to do it.

Presenter16:06

And when uh when did you sell your first piece?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle16:09

Sell it. You never sell music. I mean, people played it and um I wrote a piece and um I I put it in a in an envelope and sent it to the SPNM, which is the is the Society for the Promotion of New Music.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle16:26

And um it's the only time I've ever sent a a score anywhere and they played it and then they played it in London and then since then I I just carried on.

Presenter16:34

Your first Opera Punch and Julie was commissioned, wasn't it? How did that come about?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle16:39

John Thoole was then at the Royal Opera House. I gave him a scenario on an idea for this for this opera and he said, Okay, do it.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle16:47

And then the same thing happened with Gawain, which they did in Covent Garden two years ago. I went to see John Turley. I went through the door and he said, I suppose you want to write another opera and I said, Yes, and he said, Well, go ahead and do it. Yeah.

Presenter17:00

But that first one he he sent you in the direction of Aldborough. That was I think it was premiered in nineteen sixty eight, wasn't it?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle17:06

Was it? Yes.

Presenter17:07

And the uh the story is, as I said at the beginning, that that that the father of the festival, Benjamin Britton.

Presenter17:14

Got up and left the royal box before the inn.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle17:18

Did he well, they say that, I mean, that's all part of

Sir Harrison Birtwistle17:21

you know, the stuff that dreams are made of. You know, I'm not sure whether he did or he didn't. It's not actually the sort of thing you expect to be happening in um Aldsborough. It didn't sort of give the audience their The sort of feeling of feeling secure about the world.

Presenter17:35

Boom.

Presenter17:36

But do you ever walk out of performances?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle17:39

No, because I usually know what I'm going for. I suppose people walk out when they don't know what they're in for.

Presenter17:43

Hmm.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle17:44

I think that's the reason.

Presenter17:46

So you're not really offended. I mean, Benjamin Britton apart, you're not really offended if people walk out on your music, are you? I mean, do you f

Sir Harrison Birtwistle17:54

Feel

Presenter17:54

Feel if they don't like it, they might as well go.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle17:55

Yeah.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle17:57

Yes, I think it's good. They get r they get to leave, yes. I don't think they should be irritated.

Presenter18:04

But apart from live performances, do you listen to music at home? Do you play a lot of music?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle18:09

I never really listened to music and apart from

Sir Harrison Birtwistle18:14

One or two pieces which I have a very special relationship with, like the the Schubert Symphony.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle18:21

And um pre-Reformation music, which I'm very interested in, for a long time was not recorded, and it's only since the advent of the C D that a lot of music has been recorded.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle18:33

and I knew it very well from from the music and and which I had never heard.

Presenter18:39

We should have your next record there, I think.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle18:41

This is an antiphon by um Robert Fairfax, he was born around about uh the time of Henry the Eighth.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle18:48

It really is the sort of music that I really want to listen to.

Speaker 419:27

Christmas day.

Presenter19:53

A terne laudis lilium by Robert Fairfax, sung by The Sixteen, conducted by Harry Christophers.

Presenter20:00

You've been married, Harry Bertwysel, for thirty years or more, and you live in a remote part of south west France, in in the Lotte region. Can you can you describe it to me? It's pretty pretty bleak where you are, isn't it?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle20:12

Yes, it's a it's a a plateau. It's very arid and um

Sir Harrison Birtwistle20:18

A lot of small oaks which don't have any soil and um juniper.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle20:24

and um which goes right to the edge of the river valley, where suddenly it becomes very lush and green.

Speaker 120:27

Yeah.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle20:31

And where they grow tobacco.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle20:33

And lower down the river they grow the wines of Kaor.

Presenter20:36

But you you need to be somewhere remote removed, don't you? Well.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle20:42

I

Presenter20:42

Don't f

Sir Harrison Birtwistle20:43

I don't think so. Um, I think the thing that it gives what it gives me is continuity.

Presenter20:48

But what do you mean when you say continuity?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle20:51

Well, and uh I don't get interruption, and I can leave my stuff down and go to bed and get up the following morning and get keep going.

Presenter20:57

I thought you meant continuity through your life. I mean, in that you spent ten years in the Western Isles, didn't you? Which were which was pretty bleak.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle21:02

Which

Sir Harrison Birtwistle21:04

Must have been

Sir Harrison Birtwistle21:06

I had the most spectacular view of any one anywhere, which was right on the south of an island of Rasi, which overlooked the cooling of sky. That um view is like a bereavement to me, because I could I couldn't draw it, every nook and cranny of it.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle21:23

So why did you leave?

Speaker 421:24

So why did you leave?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle21:26

It became very difficult to live on an island.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle21:29

You can take nothing for granted.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle21:32

and it was very hard on my wife, I think.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle21:35

I just felt it was a period where it it had come to an end, and it seemed a natural break, but I miss it terribly.

Presenter21:41

And in fact, um you work, wherever you you've lived, I think, in in a similar kind of building, don't you? A a kind of edifice in the garden.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle21:51

Well when I lived in Twickenham um I had a friend who worked at the Architectural Association.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle21:57

And he built for me as a project um a a hexagonal

Sir Harrison Birtwistle22:02

Building, which they were, I think it was something to do with something you might build if there's an earthquake and that sort of thing. That was the project.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle22:10

and he he put it up in my garden. It sat under a a plum tree, a huge plum tree, and it had a g dome.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle22:17

And it was a wonderful space, quite small, it was like a

Sir Harrison Birtwistle22:22

a coat really, that um and it had a a London bus window, and that's all he'd had because you didn't need so you can use all the space inside of the walls with this this Perspex dome with the plums used to drop on.

Presenter22:36

And you built another one in in the on the island, didn't you?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle22:40

Yes, I build exactly the same thing, slightly more permanent.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle22:44

Um and that was right on the sea. I mean, you wonder why the sea didn't come through the door.

Presenter22:48

That was for this wonderful view.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle22:49

It's wonderful.

Presenter22:51

And what about now in France?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle22:53

Well, it seemed to me the right thing to do it again, so I built another one in the style of the Kercy. Um that's the exterior, but the int inside.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle23:02

Apart from when you look out of the window, you don't see the coolina sky, you see a tree.

Presenter23:07

Let's have your next piece of music.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle23:09

This is um piece of music that um really brings me back to being in the army because I had the most terrible time in the army. I thought it was appalling.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle23:19

And it's the first time that the idea that there were what a class system was in this country that I couldn't really understand what it was because I got I was put in this thing called a spider, which was a place with six places to sleep and a central ablution. And this place I was put in with all these

Sir Harrison Birtwistle23:39

clone people. I didn't know who they were and I couldn't really understand what they were. And it turned out they were all public school boys and they were all being prepared to be officers and they'd been sorted out then and all the the rest were in another one.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle23:52

And the reason I was put in with them was that, um

Sir Harrison Birtwistle23:55

I was supposed to have had an education and had qualifications, so that somehow I've been channeled into it. They soon caught on that I wasn't one of them and I was.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle24:04

Duly dispatched to the band.

Presenter24:06

And Blossom Deery reminds you of all of that, doesn't it?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle24:08

Well, yes, but when I went in the band it was the first time I really was introduced to jazz because I was there's a lot of jazz musicians there. And I think this girl is just absolutely splendid. I mean it's something it would be nice to have.

Speaker 424:23

Yeah.

Speaker 424:26

Our love is here to stay.

Speaker 424:30

Not for a year.

Speaker 424:33

Whatever I

Speaker 424:35

Day

Speaker 424:38

The radio

Speaker 424:40

And the telephone and the movies that we know.

Speaker 424:45

May just be passing fancies, and in time they go.

Presenter24:50

Blossom Deary, and Love Is Here to Stay. Can you tell me how you compose, Harry? How how do you do it? What's the process?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle24:57

It's a pretty arcane procedure, is writing music, and for people who don't write it I think it must be very, very difficult to understand how you arrive at it, because you are dealing with um hieroglyphics. And one thing that I always feel, because in a sense

Sir Harrison Birtwistle25:14

I'm a bit of a frustrated painter. I always admire painters in the sense that I always know what seem to know what they're talking about, or they touch something in me that composes when they write about it because.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle25:25

Because we deal in in this technical language, we tend to talk about this this the technique, whereas

Sir Harrison Birtwistle25:32

If you're a painter you go direct.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle25:35

And and when you make a mark, it doesn't you haven't got this.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle25:40

business where you have to have a performer or you're dealing with with hieroglyphics by which there's a delay. And um also there's the question of that it takes such a long time, I mean, particularly if you're writing for a large orchestra, that if you might have

Sir Harrison Birtwistle25:56

50 seconds of an idea. I mean, it takes you fifty seconds or ten seconds to think of it to realize it can take.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle26:04

Many, many days.

Presenter26:06

To to put it down.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle26:06

Yeah, so the creative juices are always in abeyance, and that's what I find frustrating, and that's what I admire about painters.

Presenter26:14

Would you ever use a piano?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle26:15

A little bit.

Presenter26:16

I mean

Sir Harrison Birtwistle26:16

I have a piano, it's wildly out of tune, but um

Presenter26:20

But do you I I mean I I read somewhere that you do sometimes sit down just spread your hand across the keyboard and play a chord and try and work out where you're gonna

Sir Harrison Birtwistle26:26

Player core

Sir Harrison Birtwistle26:28

That gives the wrong impression. Does it?

Presenter26:30

Does it? Yes. It's not as haphazard as that.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle26:32

No, it's not a happen. No, it's not as that.

Presenter26:34

In fact, you're not haphazard at all, are you? You're extremely methodical and neat and tidy.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle26:40

I like to think that the order in my life is in my music. And order is something which I like to have but can't attain it. I'm chaotic. If I can't organi well, I mean, you know, I'm not very good at clearing up and or whatever.

Presenter26:55

But your music is.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle26:57

I like to think so. I mean I like to think that's where the order is, yeah.

Presenter27:01

Record number six.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle27:03

This is what I consider to be one of the masterpieces of the twentieth century, and it's Stravinsky's Symphonies for Wind Instruments. And it comes from a period in his life when he wasn't d dabbling with

Sir Harrison Birtwistle27:14

Neoclassicism or any anything else, it just really is pure Stravinsky and there is nothing really like it in the repertoire.

Presenter28:22

Stravinsky's Symphonies for Wind Instruments, played by the French National Orchestra conducted by Pierre Boulez.

Presenter28:28

So when people say to you, Harry, as presumably if they've got the guts they do sometimes, I find your music difficult. I want to understand. I want to come across, but I do find it very difficult. It's not like anything I know about. Is there anything you can say to them? How how do you help them?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle28:48

Well, you have to have an open mind, I suppose.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle28:51

Um for some reason the audience for music is the most conservative audience of of all the arts. We accept it from

Sir Harrison Birtwistle29:00

From everything else, but for some reason in music, it's the thing that really.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle29:05

Is an irritant in a way for a lot of people. And I I don't know why, and I feel that it's their problem, not mine.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle29:14

I'm not trying to make it difficult.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle29:17

For me it's it's it's a an absorbing, wonderful world to work in.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle29:22

And I can't be responsible for them.

Presenter29:25

But but you must want to h help them. I mean, if if if it is such a completely absorbing world, I mean, don't you

Sir Harrison Birtwistle29:30

Well, I do it by writing it.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle29:35

And what can I do? Write an essay to go with it, or whatever I write it as clearly as I can.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle29:41

And um it it's my life.

Presenter29:43

Do you think people are lazy about their listening then? They want to hear perhaps what they've not heard before?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle29:47

No, I don't think it's lazy. I think that the currency of music is very devalued in that it's our life is full of music of one sort or another. You go into restaurants and you hear Baroque music, you hear symphonies, you hear, you know, whatever, and nobody's listening to it. And it's like the wallpaper of our lives.

Presenter30:10

Isn't it also because we we like hearing the same thing again and again, particularly if it if it touches us. I mean, it's it's like pressing that emotional button.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle30:16

I think it's just habit, isn't it? Yeah. It's like taking valium or something.

Presenter30:21

You recognize then that your music

Presenter30:23

has to be worked out a bit.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle30:25

But I think Beethoven does too.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle30:27

And I think the problem with it is, when I say being devalued, is that some of say, for instance, if we use Beethoven as as an emblem of this, it's some of the most complex music written. It's music that works on very many levels.

Presenter30:42

And has your music got anything to do?

Presenter30:46

With Beethoven, with with the places that we have enjoyed, the the composers that that have enjoyed.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle30:51

You mean is it to do with tradition?

Presenter30:52

Yes.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle30:53

Tradition is not, to my mind, is something that you can't make a self-conscious attempt to be part of.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle31:01

You know, otherwise you just ape its exterior.

Presenter31:04

Record number seven.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle31:06

But this is about dancing because when I was a kid the two things you did

Sir Harrison Birtwistle31:11

When you were not quite a a child, you you went to the cinema, you went dancing.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle31:16

And I had terrible problems with dancing, terrible inhibitions.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle31:21

And I even went to the point where I

Sir Harrison Birtwistle31:23

took dancing lessons, it was ballroom dancing of course, and they gave me a a chart where you put your feet and that made it even more complex because you think that you had to as soon as you got on the thing, I in my head I saw this wretched chart with my my left leg and my right leg, and so I gave that up.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle31:40

Very quickly. And the thing about modern dancing is that you don't need a partner, you can just do what you like. And so I just imagine on this terrible desert island which was probably full of mosquitoes, snakes at the back and

Sir Harrison Birtwistle31:54

And sharks at the front that maybe I could, you know, just sort of dance a bit. So this completely ridiculous record by Frankie Valley.

Speaker 432:08

Hurry!

Speaker 432:10

Cherry Bay with the share

Speaker 432:22

Can you drive my house tonight?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle32:29

I think it's what you call sugar pot that. I think it's tongue in cheek and very innocent and

Presenter32:36

And we can see you gyrating along the edge of the corner.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle32:37

Maybe you can.

Presenter32:40

I s I mean, from what you've said, you work in many ways on a desert island, don't you? But I mean, you can always just come out at the end of the day, and presumably your your wife and your three sons have kept you sane over the years when you've come out.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle32:49

Yeah.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle32:52

Yeah, something like that. Yeah.

Presenter32:54

Tell me lastly, before we finish, you were knighted in nineteen eighty eight, and you are, as I said at the beginning, Sir Harrison Bertwhistle. Do you like that? Did it appeal to you, as it were, to be made what you might call a member of the establishment?

Presenter33:07

Or be given the toggle.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle33:08

Yeah, I think it's a very good idea.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle33:11

I knew all the reasons not to do it.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle33:14

But there are some sort of personal reasons. You know, you accept things like that on behalf of everyone and you hope that by doing that you can you can have some influence about the things that you believe in.

Presenter33:26

And have you?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle33:27

I'm trying.

Presenter33:29

Last record.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle33:31

My last record is a bit of the ring of Wagner which I went to Bayreuth a couple of years ago, and I find it extraordinary.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle33:40

I think the size of the idea, um when you think if you can just put yourself back into the last century and just think of the idea of this man doing this, is absolutely extraordinary. And this is th what is usually called the funeral march, which really the um the climax of the whole thing. And it's from the last act of uh Gota Damarung.

Presenter35:01

Part of the final act of Wagner's Goethe Demmerung, played by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra conducted by James Levine, you now have to say which one of the eight is most important to you.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle35:13

Well, I don't think it's a place to play Stockhausen or whatever or classical music. I'd probably take the Frankie Valley.

Presenter35:20

You would, would you? Yes. Okay. What about your book?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle35:21

Yeah.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle35:25

Well, I've got an idea that I would like a Latin primer. I was never taught Latin and um there's a lot of things I would like to read in in Latin.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle35:34

I love Homer.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle35:36

I've only ever read this in English.

Presenter35:38

And what about your luxury?

Sir Harrison Birtwistle35:40

The chain saw.

Presenter35:41

It's deeply practical a chainsaw. I mean you're going to cut down trees and things.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle35:46

I can do a lot of impractical things with it. Can you? Yes.

Presenter35:48

Can you? Yes. All right. Well, in that case, you can have it. So Harrison Bird Whistle, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle35:50

You can have it.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle35:56

I enjoyed it doing it. Thank you.

Speaker 136:05

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.