"Sir Harrison Birtwistle is the most original, the most challenging and the most controversial British composer of our time. His notoriously angular music is at once defiantly modernist and deeply indebted to the traditions - medieval and modern - of English music.".

"Accessible to anyone with an interest in modern music, this book uncovers the sources of Birtwistle's art and presents a critical account of his musical, dramatic and aesthetic preoccupations through an exploration of such topics as theater, myth, ritual, pastoral, pulse and line. It places Birtwistle in a broad cultural context, examining the composers and painters who have influenced his work."--BOOK JACKET.