Over a period of months in 2013/14, I interviewed the composer Harrison Birtwistle at his home in Wiltshire for a book of conversations (Wild Tracks, Faber). Each trip had an air of mystery. As I let myself in, the door usually open, I was never sure what I would find. He might say almost nothing, or fall asleep or talk nonstop. Often he would still be at work in his garden studio, huge sheets of manuscript paper spread out before him, pencil in hand, in the middle of a thought. Would my intrusion snuff out a vital spark of inspiration? Not that Harry relied on inspiration. It was hard graft. He worked daily, for hours on end, plagued with a self-doubt only narrowly conquered by self-belief and determination.
His great gift was to see the world as a place of wonder. Ripe plums from his tree, or the sound of a harp, his favourite instrument; tomatoes from his greenhouse or the innovative electronics called “passing clouds” made for his opera The Mask of Orpheus – all were miracles to him. Nothing was humdrum, though he held strong views and there was no reasoning with him over music he disliked: American minimalism (“skimmed milk”), Tchaikovsky (“not interested”), Rachmaninov (“can’t stand it”). He had equal enthusiasms, not always expected: Morton Feldman and Pierre Boulez, Roy Orbison and Dusty Springfield, the Elizabethan viol music of William Lawes.
