Nice to see so much enthusiasm for HB's music here. Back in the Other Place his name was (unbelievably) often used as a swearword to indicate everything that's ugly and pointless about contemporary music. Anyway: I don't think there's any other living composer about whose work I have such extremely different reactions. I think The Triumph of Time, Earth Dances, The Mask of Orpheus and Antiphonies are superb, but found Gawain extremely dull and disappointing, and in general I find his music for small ensembles somewhat grey and arbitrary, apart from The Axe Manual which is possibly my favourite Birtwistle piece at the moment, even though its form comes to seem a bit simplistic and predictable after a while. One contributory factor could be that if you make as much use of "chance procedures" as Birtwistle does in his compositional process, the resulting random scatter is going to miss the target now and again, especially when there are fewer instruments involved (ie. too few to give a "statistically significant sample" of the possible variations on a given idea).

I didn't realise HB used a lot of 'chance procedure' in his compositions - not that I've ever really read anything by him about his compositional procedures (some *about* him, though). He seems a bit reluctant to explain too much about that. What I do gather is he seems to be a 'big picture' sort of guy, who then just 'fills in' the detail somehow - presumably this is where the chance procedures come in, though I'm guessing the material bears some relation to the big picture. I must say, part of the joy of modern music for me (part, that is) is trying to hear some of these structures at work. I'll never forget actually *hearing* the layers in 'Earth Dances' for the first time.

I would nominate Five Distances as a very fine exception there, although maybe you'd have to see it live...

Birtwistle had a great librettist in Stephen Pruslin for Punch and Judy ("Step on its back and make it crack")!

Poor old Britten walked out of the first performance. I mean, what did he expect?

I quite like Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum - various broken machines limping gamely on to no particular conclusion.

Again, I have always found Silbury Air particularly fascinating in view of the metrical modulations it employs. Also, it's bloody loud!

Bow Down is more fun to perform than to watch, but I understand Birtwistle still has a high opinion of it.

So, all in all, give me earlier Birtwistle (say up to Earth Dances) rather than the more recent stuff.

I've really enjoyed reading this thread. The highlight of last weeks Nash ensemble concert was a new solo　
harp piece called "crowd"
Bayan Northcott mentioned that the restrictions of writing for the harp made the music sound more 'sense`than is often the case with HB....not sure about that.
my own favourites include CAMP,Silbury Air (though the revisions he made to the percussion part,replacing cowbells with templeblocks was a crushing dissapointment)and Melancholia 1 and Punch and Judy.
One piece i've never got the gist of:  `triumph of time`- - -the works progress seems so leaden compared to what was to come later.

"Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum - various broken machines limping gamely on to no particular conclusion"

Yes! That disc with the above + "Silbbury air" + "Secret theatre" is the one I tend to pull out the most.

Would be good to see a revival of "Punch and Judy".

Actually I agree with most of what John has to say there, except that I don't think the presence of "grey" and "overlong" elements in his oeuvre is anything new. As I said before, I do think he misses the target as often as he hits it, if not more often: for every Earth Dances there's an Endless Parade, and so on.