For better or worse, we live in the age of the talking composer. Some talk well, some badly, a few — the strong, silent types — keep their mouths shut, or have to have them prised open. Harrison Birtwistle belongs, by nature, to this last category. I once, a very long time ago, interviewed him for a radio programme, mercifully pre-recorded. Each tedious enquiry would be greeted by a long silence ending with a yes or a no or an ‘I don’t understand the question.’ Nothing would persuade him to contribute to my attempts at fitting him into some preconceived image of British music in the late 1960s. Fitting them in is of course precisely what talking to composers is supposed to do. Harry quietly — very quietly — declined to cooperate.
Has anything changed in the 40 or so years since that failure? In Birtwistle, probably not much. But the questions have got better and the questioners more sympathetic. Fiona Maddocks turns up at Harry’s kitchen table, or occasionally tracks him down to Salzburg or Dartington, like a friend dropping in to chat about his work among other things. They talk about gardens and cooking, family and landscape, people and places; and music. The story of his life emerges, in bits and pieces, as it has to some extent elsewhere, but with a new texture that threads all these associations into the fabric of the music itself. Perhaps all artists, when you get close to them, are of a piece in this way. Perhaps we all are. The problem is to get close. I think these conversations succeed.
For a start, it’s clear that Maddocks loves her self-imposed task. She loves the music and she adores its composer. Better still, she obliquely lets you know why.
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