Sir Harrison Paul Birtwistle, CH (born 15 July 1934) is a British composer.
The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names.
I think music has gone through a period of something very severe, rather radical, rather the way painting did with cubism.
I think there are influences that you open the door to, and influences that come under the door.
I'm not a music lover in the sense that I look for something to have on. I've never had that attitude to music.
When I was confronted with official tuition, the academic thing, I could see no relationship whatever between that and the music I'd been writing since I was 11.
I always write the pieces I want to write.
I don't think there is much American music.
The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles.
The theatre only knows what it's doing next week, not like the opera, where they say: What are we going to do in five years' time? A completely different attitude.
I don't have ideas so much as there are things which constantly evolve. . . there are various threads or layers, if you like, which change.
The piece that had a large influence on me was Turangalila.
It's the irrational things that interest me.
Minimalism now is a reaction to what came before. It's absolutely of its time. Music moved into the set theory thing, and moved out of it.
My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter.
There are rhythmic ideas which sometimes only work up to a point. In writing there are moments when it just comes off the page, it's not just a collection of notes.
Composing's not voluntary, you know. There's no choice, you're not free. You're landed with an idea and you have responsibility to that idea.
Music is such a problem in the time it takes.
You either are or you're not.
When I was a kid, I wrote music - from the age of 11 until the age of 18.
My operas and my theatre works are very formal pieces.