Groundbreaking Composer Harrison Birtwistle Dies at 87

Composer Harrison Birtwistle, from Britain, congratulates Conductor Pierre Boulez from France and the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, on Thursday, Sept 16, 2004, at the Lucerne Festival in the KKL Culture and Congress Centre in Lucerne, Switzerland. (AP)
Composer Harrison Birtwistle, from Britain, congratulates Conductor Pierre Boulez from France and the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, on Thursday, Sept 16, 2004, at the Lucerne Festival in the KKL Culture and Congress Centre in Lucerne, Switzerland. (AP)
TT
20

Groundbreaking Composer Harrison Birtwistle Dies at 87

Composer Harrison Birtwistle, from Britain, congratulates Conductor Pierre Boulez from France and the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, on Thursday, Sept 16, 2004, at the Lucerne Festival in the KKL Culture and Congress Centre in Lucerne, Switzerland. (AP)
Composer Harrison Birtwistle, from Britain, congratulates Conductor Pierre Boulez from France and the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, on Thursday, Sept 16, 2004, at the Lucerne Festival in the KKL Culture and Congress Centre in Lucerne, Switzerland. (AP)

Harrison Birtwistle, the creator of daringly experimental modern music who was recognized as one of Britain’s greatest contemporary composers, has died at 87.

Birtwistle’s publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, said he died Monday at his home in Mere, southwest England. No cause of death was given.

Birtwistle’s compositions, which ranged from chamber pieces to large-scale opera, were given prominent performances in venues including the Royal Opera House, the English National Opera, the Deutsche Staatsoper in Berlin, the BBC Proms in London and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

His unapologetically challenging work sometimes tried the patience of listeners, but the composer was unperturbed.

"The question of accessibility,” Birtwistle once said, "is not my problem.”

"I have an idea. I express it as clearly as I can. Criticism is someone else’s problem,” he added.

Martyn Brabbins, music director of the English National Opera, said Birtwistle "was a much-loved collaborator and mentor whose work has inspired generations of musicians.”

The Royal Philharmonic Society said on Twitter that he was "a true musical colossus” whose music "shook the earth.”

Short on conventional harmony and heavy on complex rhythms, Birtwistle’s music was often described as having an abrasive quality. In 1995, his piece "Panic” had a high-profile premiere on live television as part of the hugely popular "Last Night of the Proms” concert.

The BBC was inundated with complaints. "Was somebody strangling a cat?” one viewer asked.

It wasn’t only ordinary musical audiences who winced at his work. Benjamin Britten, among Britain’s greatest 20th-century composers, reportedly left at the intermission of the 1968 premiere of Birtwistle’s chamber opera "Punch and Judy” at Britten’s own Aldeburgh Festival.

Birtwistle said audiences often had trouble with dissonance because it was unfamiliar.

"It’s to do with memory in music,” he told The Sunday Times newspaper in 2019. "For instance, if you have a Picasso, it can sit on the wall and become part of your memory, even if you only subliminally see it. In music, time is really ephemeral. Modern music is not heard for long enough for it to become familiar. You’re not getting anywhere near being familiar with it.”

Born in Accrington in northwest England on July 15, 1934, Birtwistle studied clarinet and composition at the Royal Manchester College of Music, where his contemporaries included composer Peter Maxwell Davies and the late pianist John Ogdon. In 1965, Birtwistle sold his clarinets and devoted all his time to composition.

His works include "The Mask of Orpheus,” staged by the English National Opera in 1986; "Exody,” which the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered under Daniel Barenboim in 1998; "Gawain,” which premiered in 1991 at the Royal Opera House; and "The Minotaur,” which debuted in the same venue in 2008.

Press Association, the British news agency, said "Gawain” was "avant garde and has no trace of a tune.” But Rodney Milnes, editor of "Opera” magazine, said the opera "gripped the imagination pretty remorselessly.”

Reviewing "The Minotaur,” critic Anna Picard wrote in The Independent: "Long on ugliness, short of redemptive beauty, rich with the rough, pungent poetry of David Harsent’s libretto, Birtwistle’s score is as violent as its subject.”

But in the Evening Standard, Fiona Maddocks described it as "music of coruscating, storming beauty.”

The music flowed from a unique perspective.

"I dream in the abstract - can you imagine that?” he told the BBC in 2002. "Can you imagine sort of cogs, wooden cogs that are meant to fit, but don’t. And then you try to put them in another way and they don’t, and it’s like sort of difficult to describe, but it’s a sort of abstraction.”

In 1987, Birtwistle won the $150,000 Grawemeyer Award for Composition from the University of Louisville in the United States for his opera "The Mask of Orpheus.” He was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France in 1986, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1988 and was elevated in 2001 to a Companion of Honor, a British distinction limited to 65 living people.

Birtwistle, the subject of so much criticism, memorably dished it out to pop musicians in 2006 when he accepted an Ivor Novello award.

"Why is your music so (expletive) loud?” he said. "You must all be brain dead. Maybe you are. I didn’t know so many cliches existed until the last half-hour. Have fun. Goodbye.”

Birtwistle’s wife Sheila died in 2012. He is survived by their three sons.



Movie Review: ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ Might Have Just Redeemed the Live-Action Adaptation

 Mason Thames arrives at the premiere of "How to Train Your Dragon" on Saturday, June 7, 2025, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. (Andrew Park/Invision/AP)
Mason Thames arrives at the premiere of "How to Train Your Dragon" on Saturday, June 7, 2025, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. (Andrew Park/Invision/AP)
TT
20

Movie Review: ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ Might Have Just Redeemed the Live-Action Adaptation

 Mason Thames arrives at the premiere of "How to Train Your Dragon" on Saturday, June 7, 2025, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. (Andrew Park/Invision/AP)
Mason Thames arrives at the premiere of "How to Train Your Dragon" on Saturday, June 7, 2025, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. (Andrew Park/Invision/AP)

Ever wanted to soar through the skies on the back of a friendly dragon? The new “How to Train Your Dragon” may be the ticket, from a decidedly safer, though possibly still vertigo-inducing, distance.

This live-action adaption of the underdog adventure story sends the audience cascading through the clouds with the teenage Viking boy Hiccup and his dragon friend Toothless. It’s the kind of immersive sensation and giddy wish fulfillment that might just have you forgetting momentarily to breathe and, maybe more importantly, that you’re still in a movie theater. Credit to veteran cinematographer Bill Pope, no stranger to fantasy worlds, whether it’s “The Matrix” or “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.”

“How to Train Your Dragon” doesn’t stray far from the original, from shots to story beats. Gerard Butler once again plays Berk’s Chief Stoick the Vast. The new Hiccup, actor Mason Thames, even sounds a bit like Jay Baruchel. But unlike so many live-action remakes of animated films, it also doesn’t feel superfluous, or, worse, like a poor imitation of its predecessor that trades the magic of animation for photorealism.

Perhaps that’s because filmmaker Dean DeBlois, who made the three animated films, stayed in the director’s chair. Who better to kill their darlings than the one who brought them to the screen in the first place? And, crucially, to know where live-action might actually enhance the fabric of the world created by author Cressida Cowell.

It helps that dragon technology has come a long way since, say, “DragonHeart.” These fire-breathing CG creatures feel disarmingly real. And though it might look like “Lord of the Rings” or “Game of Thrones,” the tone stays light enough for younger filmgoers. There are a few intense sequences, but none that takes it any further than the animated film did 15 years ago.

“How to Train Your Dragon” does start a little slow, however, which is odd because it also begins with a fiery battle between the Vikings and the dragons on the Isle of Berk. There’s a lot of exposition and introduction that needs to happen before you can just give yourself over to the story. In this more multicultural version, the warriors on Berk have been recruited from tribes around the globe to try to defeat the dragons.

Hiccup is a Viking nepo baby. As the chief's son, he sits in a place of privilege, but he’s also a general outcast in this world of ruthless warriors — skinny and weak, he just longs to be part of the action, not sharpening the weapons. Killing dragons is currency in this society, and his crush Astrid (Nico Parker) happens to be one of the most promising up-and-comers. His sole champion is Gobber (a delightful Nick Frost), the blacksmith and dragon slayer teacher, who convinces the chief to give the clever Hiccup a shot.

The film finds its internal engine when Hiccup finds Toothless, the wide-eyed “Night Fury” dragon whom he can’t bring himself to kill. Instead, he decides to study this discovery, who he finds is not nearly as fearsome as everyone assumes. “How to Train Your Dragon” teaches empathy and ingenuity without a sermon.

Thames, a teenager himself, is the perfect embodiment of adolescent awkwardness and boldness. You can have all the cute dragons you want, but the audience would be lost if the human conduit to the relationship isn’t up to the task. Butler seems to be having a good time, resplendent in fur and chest-thumping ideas about ancient duties. And Parker gives Astrid a relatable depth — the best in the bunch who is outshone in an unequal fight.

Kids deserve movies that are made on the biggest possible canvas. “How to Train Your Dragon” is one that's worth the trip to the theater. It might just spark some young imaginations, whether it’s to go back and read the books or dream up their own worlds. And, chances are, no one is going to be yelling “chicken jockey.”