Birtwistle was natural inside Accrington in Lancashire. He entered a Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester in 1952 on the clarinet scholarship. When there he met fellow composers Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr, and together sustaining John Ogdon and Elgar Howarth they formed the Just released Music Manchester class action, which was dedicated to the performances of serial music and other works inside the modern vein.

Birtwistle left the college around 1955, & until 1965 he manufactured the dwelling as a school teacher, on the other hand received a Harkness Fellowship, which allowed him to learn music in the United States. He later dedicated himself to composition.

Inside 1975, Birtwistle became musical director of the recently constituted Royal National Theatre in London, a post he held until 1988. From either 1994 to 2001 he was Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at King's College London.

Birtwistle's pieces come inside the complex modern style. His early act is another time reminiscent of Igor Stravinsky and Olivier Messiaen (both acknowledged influences), & his system of juxtaposing obstructs of healthy is periodically in comparison Edgar Varèse. His music makes frequent apply of ostinatos and often has the ritualistic sense.

Among Birtwistle's better known pieces come a 1st act he is happy to acknowledge, a wind quintet Chorus & Choruses (1957); a piano pieces ''Harrison's Clocks (1998); the orchestral works The Triumph of Instance (1971) & Globe Dances (1986); & a operas Punch and Judy (1967), The Mask of Orpheus (1984, for which Birtwistle won the United states$150,000 Grawemeyer Award in Music Composition for 1987), Gawain (1990), & A Previous Supper (2000).

Birtwistle gained a few ill fame inside 1995 whenever his piece for drum kit, alto saxophone and orchestra, Panic'', was premiered at the Previous Nighttime of the Proms in 1995. Birtwistle's music experienced non antecedently been heard witharound such the public forum, & virtually all of the click did non hang on to back around its veto criticism of the piece, heard in the concert traditionally devoted to supplementary popular classics & loyal pieces.