Harrison Birtwistle is recognised worldwide as one of the greatest of living composers. His music is both deeply original & highly personal, yet he has always been notoriously reticent about explaining either his music or himself. In this conversation diary, spanning six months, he talks openly to the distinguished writer & critic Fiona Maddocks, offering rare insights into the challenges, uncertainties & rewards which have shaped his life & work since childhood, & which remain with him today as he enters his ninth decade. We see the composer in the privacy of his Wiltshire studio & garden, & in the public glare of the elite Salzburg & Aldeburgh Festivals. But mostly he is at his kitchen table, talking about the essential aspects of his life- family, cooking, cricket, landscape, pruning trees
- & reflecting on the never easy process of composition. What distinguishes him & his remarkable music is an ability to see the extraordinary in the everyday, giving rise to work that is both elemental & profound. For anyone concerned with the future of music this book is essential reading.