harrison birtwistle
page five

Debussy felt that music was the most mysterious, the most enigmatic of all art forms.

I don't think that's true; in any great work of art, in whatever medium, there is something essential that you can never put your finger on.  

Let's talk about some other forms of art. Do you know of the novelist Nicholas Mosley?

No, I don’t. Tell me about him. Why are you mentioning him?  

He’s English—  

Well, there are a lot of us, you know.  

[Laughs.] There is a latent violence in his work, and some people have commented that your music also has that quality.  

Violence is a by-product of my music; it’s not something I put in. I am not expressing violence. It’s the nature of the material that I use, perhaps, that equates with violence.  

Because the creative urge is violent?

Maybe. I don’t have any control of that, nor would I ever want to write something that is violent. But I am told that my music is violent.

It’s the same thing with Francis Bacon; he would never accept that his paintings were violent.

Yes, very much. And I love those conversations with David Silvester in a book called Brutality of Fact. It is a series of conversations that takes place over about thirty years. He keeps coming back to the same things, like chance and time, for instance. Very, very interesting; I think he is an important man.