Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Harrison Birtwistle has become the most eminent and acclaimed of contemporary British composers. This book provides a comprehensive view of his large and varied output. It contains descriptions of every published work, and also of a number of withdrawn and unpublished pieces. Revealing light is often cast on the more familiar pieces by considering these lesser-known areas of Birtwistle's oeuvre. The book is structured around a number of broad themes - themes of significance to Birtwistle, but also to much other music. These include theatre, song, time and texture. This approach emphasizes the music's multifarious ways of meaning; now that even the academic world no longer takes the merits of 'difficult' contemporary music for granted, it is all the more important to assess what it represents beyond mere technical innovation. Adlington thus avoids in-depth technical analysis, focusing instead upon the music's wider cultural significance.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations and note on sources
• Introduction
• Part I Theatres
• 1 Violence
• 2 Myth
• 3 Music and drama
• 4 Narratives and rituals
• Part II Roles
• 5 Dramatic protagonists
• 6 Ceremonial actors
• 7 Negotiated identities
• 8 Soloists
• Part III Texts
• 9 Narration
• 10 Fragment
• 11 Phone
• 12 Expression
• Part IV Times
• 13 Time
• 14 Pulse
• 15 Journeys
• Part V Sections
• 16 Verse
• 17 Fragment
• 18 Context
• Part VI Layers
• 19 Melody
• 20 Polyphony
• 21 Strata
• Part VII Audiences
• Notes
• Chronological list of works
• Bibliography
• Index of works
• General index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Harrison Birtwistle is nothing if not controversial: Adlington calls him "the most eminent and acclaimed of contemporary British composers"; Michael Oliver (dubiously) dubs him "a great composer, perhaps the greatest now living." Highly thought of in England and Germany, Birtwistle is respected in the US but actually not played a great deal. And even an English critic famously dismissed one of Birtwistle's major pieces as "pure cacophony." Joining Michael Hall's Harrison Birtwistle in Recent Years (1998), both these slightly adulatory volumes are by fine British scholars and excellently written, and both will be very difficult for nonspecialists to digest. These are truly complementary works. Adlington (Univ. of Nottingham) focuses on Birtwistle's music in the large cultural context, eschewing close technical/theoretical analysis of the works and leading the reader through the complexities of cultural, dramatic, and rhetorical theory ranging from Aristotle to Adorno (and beyond). Literate, well informed, and well organized (by general themes--theaters, roles, texts, times, sections, layers, audiences--and by individual works), this is a book for advanced students, fans of the avant-garde, and fellow practitioners. Cross (Univ. of Bristol, editor of Musical Analysis) writes even more elegant prose, but his book bristles with analyses--detailed, comparative, arcane, and occasionally absolutely bewildering; despite its ludicrous claim that it is "accessible to anyone with an interest in modern music," this book will also bewilder anyone not familiar with Birtwistle's considerable output. Organized around themes similar to Adlington's--theaters, myth and ritual, verses and refrain, etc.--Cross's book seems unnecessarily diffuse, scattering its references to single works throughout many chapters. Despite his difficulty, Birtwistle is important enough to deserve his innings. Both these books do him justice and are recommended to very serious music libraries (but not the fainthearted). W. Metcalfe emeritus, University of Vermont