Groundbreaking composer Harrison Birtwistle dies at 87

Harrison Birtwistle, the creator of daringly experimental modern music who was recognised as one of Britain’s greatest contemporary composers, has died at 87. 

Birtwistle’s publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, said he died on Monday at his home in Mere, southwest England. No cause of death was given. 

Birtwistle’s compositions, which ranged from chamber pieces to large-scale opera, were given prominent performances in venues including the Royal Opera House, the English National Opera, the Deutsche Staatsoper in Berlin, the BBC Proms in London and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

His unapologetically challenging work sometimes tried the patience of listeners, but the composer was unperturbed.

“The question of accessibility,” Birtwistle once said, “is not my problem.”

“I have an idea. I express it as clearly as I can. Criticism is someone else’s problem,” he added.

Martyn Brabbins, music director of the English National Opera, said Birtwistle “was a much-loved collaborator and mentor whose work has inspired generations of musicians.”

The Royal Philharmonic Society said on Twitter that he was “a true musical colossus” whose music “shook the earth.”

Short on conventional harmony and heavy on complex rhythms, Birtwistle’s music was often described as having an abrasive quality. In 1995, his piece “Panic” had a high-profile premiere on live television as part of the hugely popular “Last Night of the Proms” concert.

READ MORE: Kurt Cobain's iconic blue guitar expected to fetch $800,000 at auction

The BBC was inundated with complaints. “Was somebody strangling a cat?” one viewer asked.

It wasn’t only ordinary musical audiences who winced at his work. Benjamin Britten, among Britain’s greatest 20th-century composers, reportedly left at the intermission of the 1968 premiere of Birtwistle’s chamber opera “Punch and Judy” at Britten’s own Aldeburgh Festival.

Birtwistle said audiences often had trouble with dissonance because it was unfamiliar.

“It’s to do with memory in music,” he told The Sunday Times newspaper in 2019. “For instance, if you have a Picasso, it can sit on the wall and become part of your memory, even if you only subliminally see it. In music, time is really ephemeral. Modern music is not heard for long enough for it to become familiar. You’re not getting anywhere near being familiar with it.”

Born in Accrington in northwest England on July 15, 1934, Birtwistle studied clarinet and composition at the Royal Manchester College of Music, where his contemporaries included composer Peter Maxwell Davies and the late pianist John Ogdon. In 1965, Birtwistle sold his clarinets and devoted all his time to composition.

READ MORE: Universal Music to manage Elvis Presley's song catalogue

In 1965, Birtwistle sold his clarinets and devoted all his time to composition.

His works include “The Mask of Orpheus,” staged by the English National Opera in 1986; “Exody,” which the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered under Daniel Barenboim in 1998; “Gawain,” which premiered in 1991 at the Royal Opera House; and “The Minotaur,” which debuted in the same venue in 2008.