麻豆社

In 1934, three of Britain鈥檚 most celebrated composers died: Edward Elgar on 23 February, Gustav Holst on 25 May and Frederick Delius on 10 June. Their music - beautiful, evocative, emotional - had grown out of a landscape that shifted between war and peace. It is music that people reached out to in private and public, against the backdrop of great industrial, technological and societal changes of the time in which they lived.

But that same year, two composers were also born: Harrison Birtwistle on 15 July and Peter Maxwell Davis on 8 September. In the mere five weeks between the death of the elders and the birth of a new generation, it was as if the earth had shifted on its axis, revealing a darker, shocking, exhilarating vision of the world, both ancient and modern.

Harry and Max met when they were both 18 and students at the Royal Manchester College of Music. They created a theatrical sonic playground of mad kings, ticking clocks, mechanical twittering machines, ritual, puppetry, myth and legend. They drew on medieval compositional practices, generating rhythmic pulses that seemed to push their way up through the music. Where Elgar, Holst and Delius drew inspiration from the surface of the land, Max and Harry seemed to burrow beneath it, their music emerging from tiny organic seeds that grew, expanded and contracted like living things.

Max died in 2016, and Birtwistle dedicated a new orchestral work to him - Deep Time, a powerful dark brooding drama inspired by the vast slowness of geological time. It was premiered in the 2017 Proms, alongside Elgar鈥檚 second symphony: two giants of British music.

This is one of 100 significant musical moments explored by 麻豆社 Radio 3鈥檚 Essential Classics as part of Our Classical Century, a 麻豆社 season celebrating a momentous 100 years in music from 1918 to 2018. Visit bbc.co.uk/ourclassicalcentury to watch and listen to all programmes in the season.

This archive recording is by the 麻豆社 Symphony Orchestra with conductor Jiri Belohlavek.

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