Harrison Birtwistle Silbury Air

Silbury Air, for chamber orchestra (1977) The London Sinfonietta Elgar Howarth to tell us something, or told us something we should not have missed, or is about to tell us something. This immanence of a revelation that does not take place is, perhaps, the aesthetic Jorge Luis Borges Something is on its way in Harrison Birtwistle s 1977 work Silbury Air: something dire is on its way, is racing to relay a splendid or terrible knowledge but it doesn t come to pass. Everything is in place: the sharp shine of ritual, the cycle of hush and outburst, the ceremonial straightjackets and incantational repetitions, the formal violence of a supreme order unfolding. To paraphrase Artaud, Birtwistle s 16minute score for 15 players is a remarkable music of cruelty, submitting to a preeminent determination, bound fiercely, rapt in tensions. Which makes it all the more extraordinary that Silbury Air smothers its epiphany, and keeps its