I think of it as something like the draft from under the door. ‘You hear it all the time in the media: what was your inspiration? What it probably means is that you filched it from someone else. Another thing he doesn’t believe in is inspiration. It is simply an additional attribute which, by tacit and inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it.’Įighty years later, at his kitchen table in Wiltshire on a midwinter afternoon, Sir Harrison Birtwistle is expounding on similar themes.The 82-year-old composer says he doesn’t believe in consciously expressing something – that expression comes in spite of oneself. ‘If music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality. ‘I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all,’ he wrote. It was his theory of anti-expression, of music’s inherent emotional sterility, of listeners’ outmoded romantic habits of ascribing meaning rather than simply loving music for music’s sake.
When Igor Stravinsky wrote his autobiography of 1936, he articulated a claim that would end up being skewed, misconstrued and chucked back at him throughout his life. This interview with Sir Harrison Birtwistle originally appeared in the March 2017 issue of Gramophone and we republish it as a tribute to the composer, who has died at the age of 87.
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