Birtwistle: The Triumph of Time (20C)

Harrison Birtwistle s The Triumph of Time was one of the works that established his international reputation. It was a commission from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which gave the first performance under Lawrence Foster on 1 June 1972. While working on the score Birtwistle found a woodcut by Pieter Bruegel the elder that mirrored his own thinking, provided him with a title and gave the work a clearer focus. Thus, The Triumph of Time comes in a distinguished line of music stimulated in some way by visual art. In the twentieth century this has produced works as varied as Rachmaninov s Isle of the Dead after Böcklin (1908), Respighi s Trittico botticelliano after Botticelli (1927), Vaughan Williams s Job after Blake (1930), Martin s Frescoes of Piero della Francesca (1955), Dutilleux s Timbres, espace, mouvement after Van Gogh (1978) and Mark-Anthony Turnage s Three Screaming Popes after Francis Bacon (1989).
Bruegel s woodcut (first published in 1574, five years after his death) depicts an unremittingly grim procession: Time leads the way, on a horse-drawn chariot, followed by Death, the grim reaper with his scythe riding on horseback. In the background, life appears to go on as usual (maypole dancing, romantic couples, villagers), but the message is clear: Time (and Death) will catch up with all of them eventually. This scene finds a new musical parallel in Birtwistle s dark-hued processional (William Mann described it as a kind of funeral march in his review of this recording in 1975). In terms of his own stylistic evolution, Birtwistle was able to explore an important and specifically musical question: in the early 1970s he declared that new concepts of time are my main compositional preoccupation . In The Triumph of Time he responded to this challenge in a highly individual way, and it s therefore important to see beyond the analogy with Bruegel s picture. In his notes for the original LP release, the composer wrote that he took the woodcut more as a reflection ... than as a model directly to be represented in sound . The result is a work of grave solemnity, predominantly slow in terms of overall pulse (though with plenty more animated activity in the background). This expansive, subtly coloured and powerful score grows in tension throughout its half-hour span, and it is unified by two recurring motifs: the first an idea of arresting simplicity played by the soprano saxophone, and the second a more elaborate phrase on the cor anglais.
Earth Dances was a BBC commission, and it is dedicated to Pierre Boulez. When it was
first played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Peter Eötvös on 14 March 1986 it was quickly hailed as a work of major importance in Birtwistle s output (though the oft-repeated claim that is it A Rite of Spring for the 1980s is misleading, not least because Earth Dances is a completely abstract work). Cast in one long movement, and scored for a vast orchestra, it is the largest non-operatic piece in which Birtwistle has explored the idea of a musical object the equivalent in sound of examining a rock or crystal from different viewpoints, or of experiencing a place from different perspectives. In Earth Dances the objects are six musical layers ( strata ), each characterised by their own distinctive constellation of musical intervals
and registers.
When Panic was played at the Last Night of the Proms on 16 September 1995 it drew a polite response from the audience in the hall, but this was followed by the late twentieth-century equivalent of a riot : the BBC switchboard was jammed by outraged viewers who had tuned in for the live television broadcast of this annual flag-waving jamboree at the Royal Albert Hall. London s tabloid press hardly noted for its coverage of new music had a field day, calling it a horr