Diana Burrell

Summary

‘I still don't think I’ve got any kind of reputation.’

When Diana Burrell and her husband decided to move out of London, they thought they were being over-optimistic in looking for a modern house down a country lane overlooking an estuary (she's a keen birdwatcher), with good local shops and easy access to London, and within walking distance of a railway station. But almost immediately they found all of those things in Harwich, on the Essex coast, and moved earlier than they’d planned to. Although they didn't choose Harwich because of its artistic life, she has since become closely involved in it: ‘When you move to a place like this you soon get found out’, she told me during my encounter with her, which took place while she was Artistic Director of the Harwich Festival of The Arts.

She offered to meet me in London but I preferred to interview her on home ground because it seemed important that our meeting take place where she lives and works. During the e-mail exchange in which the interview was arranged she described Harwich as ‘a wonderful place’ and I wanted to know how or if her surroundings influence her working life. When we met there on a murky late morning in February 2013, the view from her first-floor living room across the River Stour was largely obscured by mist, but I could imagine that on a clear day the broad expanse of sea and sky is an inspiration. In fact, she explained, it's just as often a distraction from her work, which people mistakenly think is derived from the sights and sounds of the natural world. Like that of most composers, perhaps, her home is a pleasant backdrop to her work rather than a specific inspiration for it.

When I asked her how much of her work goes on in her head before she writes it down, she started to describe the process by which she begins a new piece of music. After about thirty seconds she stopped, apparently unsure whether what she was saying made sense, and asked, ‘Is this going to be useful to you?’ I explained that, although the processes by which music is created can seem mysterious, I was interested less in that mysteriousness than in the different ways in which composers attempt to describe it when asked.