(7) Composer to composer - conversations about contemporary music by Andrew Ford

The reticence of intuition - Sir Harrison Birtwistle

[A.F.] “So how do you feel when you sit down to work? … how do you begin a piece? Do you aim for anything in particular?” p. 54

[H.B.] “It’s hard to generalise. One thing that I do seek is what I would call a musical foreground — something that speaks to the surface of the piece. It’s not two-dimensional. One you have a foreground, then you have a middle ground and a background — you have a depth, you have something you can go into. That way you can then have complexity. I don’t think you can have complexity in a situation where it’s all complex, or all thick, because then it’s all of the same order, and it’s not complex then. I’m interested in a linear complexity, rather than density. That doesn’t mean that there’s no density in what I do — there’s that as well — but there is also the opposite of it.” p. 54-55



I think you should ask yourself (Daniel) the same questions Andre Ford asked to Sir Harrison Birtwistle: “So how do you feel when you sit down to work?; How do you begin a piece?” And Do you aim for anything in particular [in the process of sketching and/or composing]?”



[A.F.] “I asked whether this interest in three-dimensional musical work — a work which, as Birtwistle puts in, you can enter — led the composer to write pieces that might be described as processionals?” p. 55

[H.B.] “Well, it might do. You see there again the processional is a means of understanding, a way into it if you like. But we could say all music is a processional, couldn’t we?” p. 55

[A.F.] “The other term that is often used to describe Birtwistle’s musical works — he has used it himself — is the labyrinth. I enquired about the difference between the labyrinth and the processional.” p. 55

[H.B.] “Weel, I think there is a difference, yes. But there again this is observation after fact. I don’t make these decisions in advance. I can’t write the program note before the piece. I think some composers could, but I can’t do that. When I look at a piece I’ve finished, my observations would be just like I was looking at anybody else’s music. And then I could take things out of it which maybe I didn’t put in, or didn’t put in consciously.
You see, I think the problem of talking about creativity is that there’s always this idea that the creator is absolutely in control and can answer everything all the way down the line. I don’t think that’s so. I think you’re in control of a certain number of things, and there are also things which happen, which are not accidents, they’re things which are thrown up by context. It’s a bit like making two buildings. You build one here and another one 200 yards down. And the obey certain principles, but what we didn’t take into consideration is the space between the two buildings, and what’s going to be a view from, say, a mile away - we didn’t consider those things.” p. 55

[A.F.] “Do you know in advance how long a piece is going to be? … Is it one of the things you plan?” p. 55

[H.B.] “No. No, I’ve no idea. I don’t have any plans. I don’t do any pre-composition at all. I start writing and when I have a context, when there’s something on the page and I can see the first building block, then I can see what I can do with it. And sometimes I rub it out — I cross the beginning out — so you don’t know where the music’s been generated from.” p. 55-56

[A.F.] “I was elaborating thus when I became aware of the grin which had begun to form on Birtwistle’s face. ‘Yeah, so what’s the question?’ Well, isn’t it extremely difficult to construct a piece — particularly a large piece — if you haven’t made any plans?”

[H.B.] “Oh no. It makes it easier. Because I have at one time tried to do this thing of planning pieces forehand, but then what happens when you come to the crossroads and you’re supposed to go this way, but that way looks a bit nicer? What do you do?”
[A.F.] "I’d go to the nicer way”
[H.B.] “Yeah, that’s right. And that’s what I do. And that’s why I’ve learned not to have any pre-composition, because then I become the victim of it, I become the slave of it, and that’s not the way I find very productive. It’s like making methods of composition outside a piece. Like how you make combinations of notes that I like, and I could never find them by other means. And so simply improvising them on the piano, and finding their correct spacing, and then subjecting them to analysis to find out if there’s any logic to them and finding ways of making them proliferate is much more interesting. Otherwise it’s academic isn’t it?” p. 56