Overview

Sir Harrison Birtwistle is the most original, the most challenging, and the most controversial British composer of our time. His notoriously angular music is at once defiantly modernist and deeply indebted to the traditions, medieval and modern, of English music.Birtwistle composes for ensembles of every size and shape but is perhaps best known for his music for the opera stage. His opera Gawain, possibly his most famous work, is fully characteristic in its marriage of a modernist musical language and a mythic subject.Accessible to anyone with an interest in modern music, this book uncovers the sources of Birtwistle's art and presents a critical account of his musical, dramatic, and aesthetic preoccupations through an exploration of such topics as theater, myth, ritual, pastoral, pulse, and line. It places Birtwistle in a broad cultural context, examining the composers and painters who have influenced his work.

Full Product Details

9780801486722

Table of Contents

Reviews

In this book, Jonathan Cross studies the sources of Birtwistle's art and presents an account of his musical, aesthetic, and dramatic preoccupations through an exploration of such topics as myth, theater, ritual, pastoral, pulse, and line. -Chamber Music. October, 2000

""Excellently written... recommended to very serious music libraries.""-Choice. November, 2000 ""In this book, Jonathan Cross studies the sources of Birtwistle's art and presents an account of his musical, aesthetic, and dramatic preoccupations through an exploration of such topics as myth, theater, ritual, pastoral, pulse, and line.""-Chamber Music. October, 2000 ""Jonathan Cross... makes these complex works accessible to the non-specialist... Cross's accounts of the operas... are among the most interesting passages, managing simultaneously to convey a sense of what the music 'sounds like' and an idea of its wider resonances.""-Michael Downes, Times Literary Supplement. January 2001 ""This is a lucid, detailed, and eloquent study of a powerful, uncompromising composer. It will surely deepen understanding and maybe even enjoyment of Birtwistle's formidably difficult music.""-American Record Guide, January/February 2001

Author Information

Jonathan Cross is Lecturer in Music at the University of Oxford and Tutor of Christ Church. He has written and lectured widely on twentieth-century music and is the author of The Stravinsky Legacy and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky. He is also the Editor of Music Analysis.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available