Harrison Birtwistle, who has died aged 87, was that surprising thing, a deeply English composer who was also internationally renowned as a great modernist.
His modernism was of a very particular kind, rooted in the primordial formal elements of music and ritualised theatrical gesture. This gives it an air of being simultaneously modern and ancient. Like that of so many English composers before him, Birtwistle’s music often feels like a slow traversal of a landscape – often a specifically English landscape. And, perhaps most important, myth (often Greek but at times English) is the music’s natural ambience.
