Life
Birtwistle was born in Accrington, a mill town in Lancashire some 20 miles north of Manchester. His interest in music was encouraged by his mother, who bought him a clarinet when he was seven, and arranged for him to have lessons with the local bandmaster. He became proficient enough to play in the local military-style band, and also played in the orchestra which accompanied Gilbert and Sullivan productions and the local choral society's performances of Messiah. Birtwistle composed from around this time, 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 met fellow composers Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr, who, together with pianist John Ogdon and conductor Elgar Howarth, formed the New Music Manchester group, dedicated to the performances of serial and other modern works.
Birtwistle left the college in 1955 then studied at the Royal Academy of Music and afterwards made a living as a schoolteacher. In 1957 he spent a short period of time in the sales office of Bells Asbestos and Engineering in Slough. In 1965 a Harkness Fellowship gave him the opportunity to continue his studies in the United States and he decided to dedicate himself to composition.
In 1975 Birtwistle became musical director of the newly established Royal National Theatre in London, a post he held until 1983. He has been honoured with a knighthood (1988) and as a Companion of Honour (2001). From 1994 to 2001 he was Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at King's College London. Birtwistle was the 1987 recipient of the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. 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.
The artist Adam Birtwistle is his son.
Read more about this topic: Harrison Birtwistle
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The life of mind is best and pleasantest for man, since mind more than anything else is man. This life therefore is also the happiest.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“Judgments, value judgments concerning life, whether for or against it, can in the end never be true: their only value is as symptoms, they only come into consideration as symptoms—in themselves such judgments are stupidities. We must reach out and attempt to put our finger on this astonishing finesse, that the value of life cannot be assessed.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)