LOS ANGELES — When Harrison Birtwistle died last week at 87, he became the sixth pioneering composer who came to prominence in the 1960s that we lost in less than nine months. This uncompromising British modernist, along with Holland's most important composer, Louis Andriessen, and Americans Frederic Rzewski, George Crumb, Alvin Lucier and William Kraft, helped to bring about revolutionary ways in which music could be made, performed, distributed and considered.
They are far from the last of their post-World War II generation of rebels. In America, we still have Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Joan Tower, Wadada Leo Smith, Morton Subotnick, William Bolcom, Adolphus Hailstork, La Monte Young and several others — all in their 80s and indispensable.
Even so, the consequence of the current loss is enormous and hard to process because little of their music is part of the regular performing, recording or broadcasting diet, with the exception of Birtwistle in Britain. Nor has there been, outside of local memorials, widespread acknowledgment of, let alone tribute to, their significance. The exception is L.A.
