Гаррисон Биртвистл: Англияның көрнекті композиторы (1934-2022)

English composer (1934–2022)

Sir Harrison Birtwistle (15 July 1934 – 18 April 2022) was an English composer of contemporary classical music best known for his operas, often based on mythological subjects. Among his many compositions, his better known works include The Triumph of Time (1972) and the operas The Mask of Orpheus (1986), Gawain (1991), and The Minotaur (2008). The last of these was ranked by music critics at The Guardian in 2019 as the third best piece of the 21st century. Even his compositions that were not written for the stage often showed a theatrical approach. A performance of his saxophone concerto Panic during the BBC's Last Night of the Proms caused "national notoriety". Other youthful activities included the construction of amateur theatrical sets, and the subsequent imagining of dramas taking place inside them. Birtwistle became proficient enough to play in the local military style band and also played in the orchestra that accompanied Gilbert and Sullivan productions and the local choral society's performances of Handel's Messiah. From around this time Birtwistle first composed, later describing his early pieces as "sub Vaughan Williams". In 1952 he entered the Royal Manchester College of Music in Manchester on a clarinet scholarship. While there he came in contact with contemporaries including Peter Maxwell Davies, Alexander Goehr, the pianist John Ogdon, and the trumpeter Elgar Howarth.

Birtwistle served as director of music at Cranborne Chase School from 1962 until 1965, before continuing his studies at Princeton University on a Harkness Fellowship, where he completed the opera Punch and Judy to a libretto by Stephen Pruslin. This work, together with Verses for Ensembles and The Triumph of Time, led to greater exposure for Birtwistle in the classical music world. The orchestral work The Triumph of Time, inspired by a woodcut by Pieter Bruegel, premiered in 1972. In 1975, he became musical director of the newly established Royal National Theatre in London, a post he held until 1983. for his epic opera The Mask of Orpheus. The following year, Birtwistle's saxophone concertante work Panic was premiered in the second half of the Last Night of the Proms, as the first piece of contemporary music ever, According to the Daily Telegraph, it met with incomprehension from many viewers. In 1995, he was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. At the 2006 Ivor Novello Awards he criticised pop musicians at the event for performing too loudly and using too many clichés. Among the musicians who performed his works are conductors Pierre Boulez, Sir Andrew Davis, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph von Dohnányi, Oliver Knussen but occasionally gave interviews. In 2019, he was interviewed for Composer of the Week on BBC Radio 3. He married Sheila Duff, a singer, in 1958. and Silas, are artists. Sheila died in 2012.

Birtwistle's music is not categorised as belonging to any particular school or movement. For a time, he was described as belonging to the Manchester School, a phrase invented as a parallel to the Second Viennese School to refer to Birtwistle, Goehr, and Davies. Even when not creating a visual piece involving stage action, Birtwistle's musical output remained frequently theatrical in conception. The music does not follow the logic and rules of classical forms such as sonata form, but is structured more like a drama. Furthermore, different musical instruments can almost be seen to take the part of different characters in the drama. This is especially apparent in a performance of Secret Theatre (1984). For various portions of the piece, a number of the instrumentalists perform in a soloist capacity. For this, they leave their seat in the ensemble and stand separately, to one side of the ensemble, returning to the group when they are no longer given that role.