Harrison Birtwistle is one of the UK’s leading composers. “I can’t get into all that stuff about communication. That’s what so many younger composers are doing now, and to me it seems retrogressive. It’s all rhetoric and no form. For me, music is all about making a real form, otherwise all you’re doing is making a substitute, adding another piece into a world that is already filled with pieces very like it. You have to have a vision.”