Michael Tippett
Encyclopedia
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM
CH
CBE
(2 January 1905 – 8 January 1998) was an English composer.
In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music. The works for which he is best known are the Concerto for Double String Orchestra
, the oratorio
A Child of our Time
and the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli
.
His deeply-held humanitarian
and pacifist
beliefs shaped both his life and his music: he served a prison sentence as a conscientious objector
in the Second World War
. An interest in many aspects of contemporary culture is reflected in his music and writings. Tippett was one of the first openly gay composers to explore issues of sexuality in his work. The libretti of his operas, which he wrote himself, attracted criticism for their apparent naivety and sometimes awkward and not quite idiomatic use of contemporary slang, as well as for their sometimes obscure extra-musical references. He had a keen interest in musical education and in later life was active as a broadcaster and lecturer. As a conductor he recorded many of his own works. He is generally acknowledged to be one of the most important British composers of the 20th century.
family. A lawyer and entrepreneur, his investments included the Lyceum Theatre, London and a hotel in Cannes
, France. His mother, Isabel Clementina Binny Kemp (1880–1969) trained as a nurse. She was a novelist and playwright, a member of the Labour Party
and a suffragette
who went to prison for her beliefs.
In the year of his birth, the family moved to Wetherden
in rural Suffolk
. He had a happy and active childhood, enjoying home theatricals and singing in the church choir. From an early age he showed an aptitude for music. Despite their liberal views his parents knew little about music as a profession and were bemused when, aged ten, he told them that he wanted to become a composer. At preparatory school in Dorset
he wrote an essay disproving the existence of God. He was sent to Fettes College
near Edinburgh, which he hated. After admitting an affair with another boy, his parents removed him. The remaining years of his school education were at Stamford School
in Lincolnshire
. Here he flourished, learning piano and harmony
with Frances Tinkler, a dedicated and supportive mentor. His first experience of modern music was hearing Ravel's
Mother Goose
suite at a concert in Leicester
conducted by Malcolm Sargent
. From that moment on, he knew he had to be a composer.
Financial difficulties after the First World War forced his parents to sell their home and live in the Cannes hotel. In time this too was sold and the family lived an unsettled existence moving around Europe. Tippett spent vacations with them, learning French and Italian and acquiring at an early age an easy familiarity with European people and manners. At school Tippett's atheism
and general rebelliousness prompted the headmaster to ask that he be removed to lodgings in the town, out of bounds to the other boys. In the meantime he bought a copy of Stanford's
Musical Composition, and set about teaching himself to compose. A chance encounter with a musician on a train led to an interview with the Principal of the Royal College of Music
in London. Tippett was accepted, despite his lack of musical knowledge. His parents agreed to pay his fees on condition that he aim to become a Doctor of Music
, and in the summer of 1923 he began studies at the RCM.
London opened up a new world of musical and social opportunity for Tippett. He hungrily absorbed all that the capital had to offer, from Beethoven symphonies
at the Promenade Concerts, Palestrina
mass
es at Westminster Cathedral
to Mozart opera
s at the Old Vic
. Through new friends he was able to pursue his interest in theatre.
Tippett's first composition tutor was Charles Wood
, who used the works of the established masters – Bach, Mozart, Beethoven – as models, stressing the importance of a solid understanding of musical forms and syntax. Tippett had always felt that he lacked a secure technique and welcomed this rigorous approach. When Wood died, he decided not to study with Vaughan Williams
, then a member of the RCM teaching staff. Rather than become a mere imitator of the great man, he chose instead a pedantic teacher, Dr C.H. Kitson. The relationship between teacher and pupil was at times strained. Kitson's teaching was harmony-based, and Tippett's natural style was contrapuntal
. He persevered, however, and after four years had built the foundations of a solid compositional technique. His piano studies with Aubin Raymar were less successful, but from Malcolm Sargent
and Adrian Boult
he learned a working knowledge of the orchestra
and conducting
. He graduated in 1928 after failing the exams at the first attempt.
, Surrey
entailed a move back to the rural environment that he knew and loved. Exciting as London had been, he needed space and quiet to compose. In 1929 he rented a small cottage on the North Downs
, formed a madrigal
group and took up a teaching post at a local school. With help from his father, he was able to build a bungalow at nearby Limpsfield
. At the local Barn Theatre Tippett undertook productions of a number of stage works, including his own version of the 18th century ballad opera The Village Opera
. He conducted two complete performances of Handel's
Messiah
, a rare event at the time. Having loved the stage since his schooldays, he relished the opportunity to improve his knowledge of stagecraft and to study the challenges of word setting in the different disciplines of opera and oratorio
.
Tippett's own music began to feature in the Oxted programmes, and in April 1930 a concert took place consisting entirely of his own compositions. Though favourably received by the press – The Times
described his music as having "a personal distinction and sincerity which is absent from the work of the Central European composers of today" – the experience convinced Tippett that he still lacked a watertight technique. He withdrew the pieces and arranged further study with R. O. Morris
, an expert on 16th century polyphony
who had already taught Tippett at the RCM. A rigorous training ensued, during which he learned to write fugues in the style of Bach
. These eighteen months were probably the most formative in the composer's life. Under Morris's guidance he finally achieved the mastery of counterpoint that had long been his goal.
Tippett accepted his homosexuality
from an early age, but felt disturbed by a feeling of exclusion from 'normal life':
"[B]eing unable to enter into a biological relationship with a woman, it seemed that I was excluded from an understanding of half the human race." He was also keenly aware of parental disapproval of his sexuality. With his good looks, charm and charisma, Tippett was a magnet for both men and women. He had a number of intense, emotional friendships with women, some of whom undoubtedly wanted more. One such was Evelyn Maude, an amateur cellist with whom he had a close, supportive friendship. Deeply in love with Tippett, her role was that of confidante, almost like an elder sister. Equally intense was his friendship with Francesca Allinson, a musician and musicologist. At one time they contemplated adopting children. Her suicide at the end of World War II
affected him profoundly. But it was a young painter, Wilfred Franks, who inspired the composer's first real love experience. In Tippett's own words, his relationship with Franks was "the deepest, most shattering experience of falling in love", and "a major factor underlying the discovery of my own individual musical 'voice'. "
While hiking with Franks in the North, Tippett was horrified by the sight of under-nourished children. The experience convinced him that "somewhere music could have a direct relation also to the compassion that was so deep in my heart". From then on, he sought to combine music-making with political action. He gave up the school teaching job and took on the conductorship of a number of amateur choirs. At a concert in London's East End
he encouraged choir members to bring food for the audience as well as for themselves. Through his friend David Ayerst, Tippett went to work at experimental farms for the unemployed in Yorkshire
. There he mounted a special version of The Beggar's Opera
for local people to perform. Its success led to the composition of a new work: the ballad opera Robin Hood
. Although never published, Tippett reworked some of the material in his 1948 Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles. He began to conduct the South London Orchestra, made up largely of theatre musicians made redundant by the arrival of the 'talkies'
. Through Francesca Allinson he met the Marxist composer Alan Bush
, who was the conductor of the London Labour Choral Union.Tippett conducted the orchestra at the Pageant of Labour
at the Crystal Palace on 15–20 October 1934.
Tippett's political leanings reflected his love of personal freedom and dislike of oppressive authority. Thus he embraced Trotsky's
internationalism
over Stalin's
rigidly controlled and centralised state. He joined the Communist Party
in 1935, but left after failing to subvert it to Trotskyism
. In 1935 Tippett wrote an agitprop
play, War Ramp, about the role of public credit in the financing of war. Although the logic of the play's argument seemed to lead to the advocacy of violent revolution, he rejected this. By gradual stages, he was drawn to pacifism
. Faced with the twin evils of Nazism
and Stalin's labour camps
, he became one of 100,000 people to take up the pledge of the Rev. Dick Sheppard
: 'I renounce war and never again, directly or indirectly, will I support or sanction another.' The result was the Peace Pledge Union
. Tippett became a prominent member and eventually its president. One of his last public acts was to unveil the Commemorative Stone to Conscientious Objectors in Tavistock Square
, Bloomsbury
, London, on 15 May 1994, International Conscientious Objectors' Day.
, the Fantasia on a Theme of Handel and the oratorio A Child of Our Time
.
The period leading up to the composition of this, Tippett's first major work and the one for which he is still best known, was one of turmoil for the composer. He went through an acute emotional crisis after Franks announced his plans to marry, and turned to Jungian
self-analysis. For nine months Tippett wrote down all his dreams, stopping three days before the outbreak of the Second World War
. His final recorded dream, in which he imagined he was strangled by four men, seemed to him a sign of impending rebirth. On the day war was declared, 3 September 1939, Tippett began to write the music for A Child of Our Time. Tippett had originally conceived the idea of an opera based on the Irish Easter Rising
of 1916. But an event occurred that provided him with a scenario ideally fitted to his conception of a work both contemporary and in the grand choral tradition of Bach's Passions and Handel's Messiah. The 1938 shooting of a German diplomat by a young Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan
, led directly to the worst anti-Jewish pogrom
of the pre-war years, culminating in the events of Kristallnacht
on 9 November when thousands of Jewish homes, shops and premises in Germany and Austria were ransacked and burned. Tippett shared in the widespread public horror and felt impelled to respond.
A few years previously he had formed a friendship with the poet and playwright T. S. Eliot
. Eliot was to be one of the most influential figures in his professional life, and Tippett often described him as his "spiritual father". Of particular importance was the older man's advice on the relationship between words and music and the problems involved in setting texts. Tippett asked Eliot to write the libretto for his new oratorio, but the poet refused, feeling that Tippett had already written a major part and that his contribution would compete with the music for attention. A Child of Our Time was completed in 1941 but not performed until 1944. During this time Tippett was steadily gaining critical recognition for his work. Though he had few performances of his music, and the BBC
, the International Society for Contemporary Music
(ISCM) Festival and the publishers Boosey & Hawkes
all turned down the Concerto for Double String Orchestra (later to be one of his most popular works), a private recording of the First Piano Sonata by Phyllis Sellick
attracted favourable reviews. William Glock
, writing in The Observer
, hailed it and the recently premiered Second String Quartet by announcing that "A new composer has emerged in English music", The publishers Schott
agreed to publish the Piano Sonata and the Concerto for Double String Orchestra. They remained Tippett's publishers for the rest of his life.
Tippett was invited in 1940 to become the director of music at Morley College
in South London. In the eleven years of his tenure the choir grew from 10 to nearly 50. Tippett appointed a number of former refugees to his staff including the composer Matyas Seiber
, the conductor Walter Goehr
and three of the future members of the Amadeus Quartet
. He brought the countertenor
Alfred Deller
from Canterbury Cathedral
to sing solos in Purcell
Odes, gave performances of Monteverdi's
Vespers (1610) and Stravinsky's
Les Noces
, and recorded Tallis's
40-part motet
Spem in Alium
.
Tippett's pacifism led him to issue a statement rejecting war and affirming the right of artists not to be conscripted. He registered as a conscientious objector
, but refused to accept a condition that would have required his giving up his work at Morley College. His friends and admirers, among them Vaughan Williams, tried to dissuade him but he stood firm. In June 1943 Tippett was sentenced to three months at Wormwood Scrubs
. His immediate cell neighbours were a rapist and a murderer. He sewed mailbags, studied Bach's The Art of Fugue
and assisted the small prison orchestra. When he was released he felt he had "come home". For his mother it was her "proudest moment".
In 1943 Tippett met Benjamin Britten
and his partner, the tenor
Peter Pears
. He invited them to perform at Morley College and they stayed at his home at Oxted. The cantata Boyhood's End, composed for Britten and Pears, reflected a common interest in Purcell
. When Tippett showed him the score of A Child of Our Time Britten was enthusiastic about the work and urged him to get it performed. The premiere took place on 19 March 1944 at Adelphi Theatre
. Pears was one of the soloists and Goehr conducted. The reaction of the critics was mostly favourable. Glock, writing in The Observer, declared it "the most moving and important work written by an English musician for many years". Performances in Europe followed and made a profound impact.
was given its first performance in 1945, conducted by Sargent, while the Third Quartet was premiered in 1946 by the Zorian Quartet.
Tippett was meanwhile planning what was to be his biggest and most personal statement to date, the opera The Midsummer Marriage
. Uncommissioned, it took six years to write and placed severe physical and emotional demands on its composer. The libretto was Tippett's own. Other works from this period are the Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles, commissioned in 1948 by the BBC, the song-cycle The Heart's Assurance, written in memory of Francesca Allinson and first performed in 1951 by Britten and Pears, and the 1953 Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli
. Now one of Tippett's most popular and frequently performed works, it attracted criticism at the time. Sargent refused to conduct the first performance as he thought it overburdened with notes. He told Tippett's publisher Howard Hartog that his "one interest" was "removing all this intellectualism from English music". The Times thought it too complex and difficult to listen to: "The excessive complexity of the contrapuntal writing in the earlier part of the work defeated its own ends; there was so much going on that the perplexed ear knew not where to turn or fasten itself."
Denigration of Tippett reached a climax with the first production of The Midsummer Marriage at Covent Garden
in 1955. Many of the critics attacked the libretto as obscure or even incomprehensible. It was claimed that the cast were in confusion about the plot. The music, however, was more warmly received. Subsequent productions and recordings have won the opera widespread admiration: the 1968 LP recording sold 3,750 copies in its first week of sale in the United States.
Controversy also surrounded the premieres of two other major works of the 1950s, the Piano Concerto (1955) and the Second Symphony
(1957). The concerto was declared unplayable by its appointed soloist, Julius Katchen
, and he was replaced by Louis Kentner
. At the symphony's first performance, the music broke down a few minutes into the first movement and the performance had to be restarted. Sir Adrian Boult, conducting, told the audience that he was to blame. It later transpired that the orchestra's leader had altered the bowing of the string parts to make them more readable, and in so doing obliterated the natural off-beat phrasing that Tippett had carefully notated. Tippett received support when the conductor John Barbirolli
, himself a string player, approved the original notation of the parts.
was produced by the Royal Opera in 1962 as part of the festival to mark the opening of the new Coventry Cathedral
. The following night Britten's War Requiem
had its premiere. This time there was less criticism of the libretto, which Tippett had extracted from the epic poems of Homer
, than of the music. In contrast to the radiant lyricism of The Midsummer Marriage, the sound-world was stark and austere, with notable use of brass and percussion. The terseness of the libretto was reflected in a new intensity, economy, and fragmentation. A similar approach can be seen in other works from this period: the Second Piano Sonata (1962), the Concerto for Orchestra (1963) and The Vision of Saint Augustine (1965).
In 1960 Tippett moved into a house in Corsham
, Wiltshire
with his partner Karl Hawker, a young painter. Hawker and he had previously been living in somewhat strained circumstances with Tippett's mother in an old manor-house in Wadhurst
, Sussex
. He took up a post as music adviser at the nearby Bath Academy of Art and invited young composers to his house, including Harrison Birtwistle
, Peter Maxwell Davies
, Alexander Goehr
. From the mid-1960s until the early 1970s, Tippett had a close relationship with the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra
(LSSO), conducting them regularly in the UK and on tour in Europe. For them he composed The Shires Suite, one of his most accessible works. He found time to serve on the music committee of the British Council
and on the advisory panel to the BBC
. His services to music were recognised by the award of a CBE
in 1959 and a knighthood in 1966.
Tippett's first visit to America in 1965 was a watershed in his life and work. Invited as guest composer to the music festival in Aspen
, Colorado
, he loved the wide open landscapes and the warmth and candour of the young Americans he met. The experience changed him and his music. The most immediate impact was on the shaping of the libretto for his third opera, The Knot Garden
. Set in a modern city garden, its complex tangle of relationships and open exploration of sexuality are clearly influenced by 1960s American theatre and cinema. Musically, the opera draws on Tippett's love of jazz and blues, and the orchestra line-up includes electric guitar
and drums. A striking feature is the use of novel, quasi-cinematic musical 'dissolves' and cross-cutting forward and back in time. The first production was directed by Peter Hall at Covent Garden in 1970 and revived in 1972.
Tippett continued to confront both personal and public demons in his Third Symphony of 1973. The finale, quoting from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
, contains settings of his own texts that attempt to find a response to the horrors of the Holocaust. Here, as in A Child of Our Time, Tippett turns to the blues for spiritual and emotional solace, and in his writing for solo soprano achieved perhaps his most successful and moving tribute to Bessie Smith
, an artist he had long admired.
. Commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and first performed by them in 1977 under Georg Solti
, its one-movement form encompasses the traditional four-movements of the classical symphony. Tippett described it as a 'birth to death' piece. Chamber works from the 1970s include the Third Piano Sonata, first performed by Paul Crossley
at the 1973 Bath Festival
(Tippett was artistic director of the festival from 1969–1974) and the Fourth String Quartet, premiered by the Lindsay String Quartet at Bath in 1979. These artists were among a growing number whose committed advocacy of the composer helped his music to reach a wider audience. Chief among them was the conductor Colin Davis
. His recordings of the four symphonies, operas and choral works have set a benchmark for all later interpretations.
The Ice Break
, Tippett's fourth opera, was beset by production difficulties. At its Covent Garden premiere in 1977 it received a mixed reception. The libretto was attacked for its use of contemporary slang and the plot, featuring race riots and a psychedelic
'trip', was held by some to be sensational. Further productions have strengthened the work's reputation, but it remains one of the least-performed of Tippett's major works.
From 1970 onward Tippett experienced health problems. His eyesight grew worse as a result of macular dystrophy
and he began to need special large-sized manuscript paper to see the notes. With the help of his musical amanuensis Michael Tillett and his personal assistant, travelling companion and close friend Meirion Bowen he was able to complete his later scores. A move to a modern house in the middle of rolling fields near Calne
in Wiltshire gave Tippett the privacy he wanted, as well as providing a setting for him to entertain his many friends and musical admirers. His relationship with Karl Hawker had greatly deteriorated by the time of the move. Hawker left to live in London and in 1984 he committed suicide.
Tippett's music increased greatly in popularity during the 1970s, thanks in part to the recordings made by Philips. His seventieth birthday in January 1975 coincided with the showing on British television of the film Akenfield
, which made prominent use of the Fantasia Concertante on a theme of Corelli. In the United States his music was becoming widely known and performed, and he began to attract a following among young musicians: he was amused when four students turned up in Chicago in 1974 wearing 'Turn on to Tippett' T-shirts. A score of British Universities awarded him honorary doctorates, and further official recognition came with the award in 1983 of the Order of Merit
.
After writing the gamelan-inspired Triple Concerto of 1979, Tippett concentrated on the composition of The Mask of Time, a large-scale, ambitious choral piece that was in some ways a summation of his life's work. Commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
, its European premiere at the 1984 Proms was relayed on BBC television. The vast scope of the text, itself almost an anthropological survey taking in creation myths, world religions and man's impact on the planet, impressed critics and listeners alike, as did the similarly eclectic score. A series of world tours had inspired Tippett to extend his musical vocabulary to include exotic percussion and wordless choral effects.
A less favourable reception was given to his last opera, New Year
. At its Houston premiere in 1989 audiences were unimpressed by the futuristic space-age electronic sound effects and jokey subtitles. It fared better at Glyndebourne
in 1990, but Tippett's bleak vision of 'Terror Town', where the sole unifying ritual is the singing of Auld Lang Syne
at the turn of the year, surprised and disturbed those who perhaps missed the astonishing youthful energy and inventiveness of the music. Tippett completed three more works in his late eighties: the Fifth String Quartet, Byzantium for soprano and orchestra and his final luminous orchestral masterpiece, The Rose Lake, inspired by a visit to Lake Retba
in Senegal
in 1990. In 1996, Tippett moved from Wiltshire to London. In 1997, while in Stockholm
for a retrospective of his concert music, he developed pneumonia. He was brought home to England, where he died early in 1998.
Among those composers who have acknowledged Tippett as an influence on their work are Mark-Anthony Turnage
, David Matthews
, William Mathias
and Edward Cowie
.
and madrigals
, Purcell
, Bach, Handel, Beethoven
, Stravinsky
, Sibelius
, Hindemith
and Bartók
to folk music
, blues
, jazz-rock and Bali
nese gamelan
music, eventually finding his own highly personal and expressive style.
From the long flowing lines and subtle interplay of voices in the music of Palestrina
and Byrd
, he learned how to write contrapuntally
. The rhythmic vitality of the English madrigal
provided the model for the 'sprung' rhythms of his early works, such as the Concerto for Double String Orchestra
. Purcell was a major influence, both for his idiomatic word-setting and his expressive use of dissonance
and 'false relation
s' to convey anguish – this last being a common factor in the music of other 17th century composers, especially Monteverdi
and Dowland
. Such non-functional harmony
is characteristic too of the 'wrong-note' style of Stravinsky in the 1920s, as well as the 'blue' notes
of jazz
.
Bach was less an inspiration than a mentor for Tippett, who was more drawn to the dramatic flair of Handel. Nevertheless he applied himself diligently to the study of Bach's fugue
s under Morris, a discipline which enabled him to write fugally with confident mastery. Beethoven remained a major obsession throughout his life. His influence can be seen principally in the symphonies and chamber works. The dynamic energy of Beethoven, the dramatic ebb and flow of his music and his use of strongly contrasting, even opposing elements to create a musical argument are all characteristic of Tippett's music. He described his Third Piano Sonata as his "late Beethoven sonata", and in the finale of the Third Symphony paid direct homage by quoting the opening bars of the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
.
A feature of many of Tippett's early works is their use of irregular rhythms and pulse or 'additive rhythm'
. This can be traced to a number of sources including folksongs
of the British Isles. A parallel can be found in the work of Stravinsky and Bartok, both of whom were inspired by the rhythms of folk music. Harmonically, both of these composers (and Hindemith) made use of harmonies based on the interval of a fourth – known as 'quartal'
– to replace the classic 'functional' harmony that had been around since at least 1600. Chords built up in fourths (or fifths) feature in many of Tippett's works, an example being the opening of the Piano Concerto.
and Britten, Tippett was slow to mature. Having found his musical voice, it continued to develop throughout his career. In the process his music went through several changes of style; the most dramatic and far-reaching of these was associated with the composition of his second opera King Priam.
A different kind of change occurred after he visited in America in 1965. The impact of American culture, landscapes and people all pointed Tippett in a new direction. The immediate result was the claustrophobic, emotional hot-house of The Knot Garden, with its references to psychoanalysis, political extremism and sexual politics. Musically, the new elements were increased dissonance, complexity and the presence of electric guitar and jazz percussion in the orchestra pit. The Triple Concerto of 1979 saw a return to the melodic style of the early works, albeit with a darker orchestral palette coloured with exotic percussion. In his final years Tippett achieved a synthesis of all these elements in a richly allusive Expressionism
.
Broadly speaking, Tippett's music can be seen as falling into four distinct periods. The first period (1935–47) includes the first three quartets, the Concerto for Double String Orchestra
, the oratorio
A Child of Our Time
and the First Symphony
. This period is characterised by strenuous contrapuntal energy and deeply lyrical slow movements. The second period, from then until the late 1950s, includes the opera The Midsummer Marriage
, the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli
, the Piano Concerto and the Second Symphony
; this period features rich textures and effervescent melody. The third period, the 1960s and early '70s, is in stark contrast, and is characterised by abrupt statements and simplicity of texture, as in the opera King Priam
, the Concerto for Orchestra and the Second Piano Sonata. The fourth period is a rich mixture of all these styles, using many devices, such as quotation (from Beethoven
and Mussorgsky
, among others). The main works of this period were the Third and Fourth Symphonies
, the operas The Ice Break
and New Year, and the large-scale choral work The Mask of Time.
While it is true that Tippett's music is not as obviously 'English' in style as composers of the so-called 'English pastoral school' - Vaughan Williams, Holst
and Delius
, and later Howells
and Finzi
- there is an underlying thread of nature mysticism running through it which is as English as William Blake
, Samuel Palmer
or John Keats
. Tippett lived most of life in the English countryside. He spent his childhood in rural Suffolk, only forty miles away from Britten's home town of Lowestoft
in Suffolk.
In later life, his music room looked out onto the rolling Wiltshire downlands. In the words of the composer David Matthews
,
"There are passages in his music which evoke the 'sweet especial rural scene' as vividly as Elgar
or Vaughan Williams; passages (such as the Pastorale from the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli) perhaps redolent of the Suffolk landscape with its gently undulating horizons, wide skies and soft lights. But Tippett's music, unlike that of the previous generation, is not obviously nostalgic; there is no sense of loss, rather of a vision continually present."
his use of 'additive rhythm', where irregular groupings of notes create a fluid pulse quite unlike the rigid beat of previous classical composers such as Beethoven or Brahms. A good example is the finale of the First String Quartet. The music is light, buoyant and dance-like. Many of his themes use a type of syncopation found commonly in jazz and popular song, known as 'anticipatory rhythm'. Here the stress is thrown forward onto an unstressed offbeat, as in the opening subject of the Concerto for Double String Orchestra or the spiritual 'Nobody Knows the Trouble I See, Lord' from A Child of Our Time.
, Hindemith, Stravinsky and Bartok. His style remained broadly tonal until the Second Symphony, when it embraced polytonality. From King Priam onwards, dissonance and chromaticism
were to the fore, resulting in what some writers have called 'free atonality' or 'pantonality.'
, and was struck not only by their direct emotional appeal but by their melodic construction and careful placing of climaxes. Asked by a group of music students in Boston which twentieth-century composer he most admired, he replied, "Gershwin
: because in an age of experimentation with rhythm...Gershwin kept song alive. In the "Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles (1948), Tippett reworked folk-like melodies from his earlier ballad opera Robin Hood
. He also used the Scottish hymn tune Crimond
, a traditional French cradle song, an Irish version of the fertility dance-tune "All Around My Hat"
and a reference to the English folksong "Early One Morning
". The slow movement of the First Piano Sonata is based on the Scottish folk melody "Ca the Yowes to the Knowes", as is that of the Concerto for Double String Orchestra. Other works inspired by folksong include Four Songs from the British Isles for unaccompanied choir (1956) and The Shires Suite (1970).
A different kind of folksong inspired one of Tippett's most frequently-performed works. The five African-American spirituals
which form the emotional core of the oratorio A Child of our Time
were chosen by the composer as a modern alternative to the traditional chorale
s in the Passions of Bach. Their contemporary relevance is reinforced by the emergence in the 1950s of the Civil Rights Movement
in the United States.
Melody plays an important role in all of the works Tippett wrote in the 1930s and 1940s. The slow movement of the First String Quartet opens with "an extended arch of lyric melody" (Ian Kemp), which was a direct response to the experience of falling in love: "all that love flowed out in the slow movement of my First String Quartet, an unbroken span of lyrical music in which all four instruments sing ardently from start to finish" was Tippett's own description. The music of the 1950s is fundamentally lyric in style, though there are comparatively few long-breathed melodies; two such can be found in the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli, and the Piano Concerto opens with a long tune for high piano and flute, creating "a sustained crescendo, thirty-three bars long leading to a sonorous tutti"(David Matthews). The fourth movement of the Second Symphony contains a passage consisting of a long arching line for unison violins (followed by 'cellos), accompanied by swirling woodwind, which the composer described as "a very long melody".
Over twenty years later Tippett returned to writing melody of deceptive simplicity in the slow movement of the Triple Concerto. His final work, The Rose Lake is subtitled 'A Song without Words for orchestra'.
After this long period of gestation, he wrote slowly but steadily. "Noting Eliot's comment that, for himself as a poet, 'the words come last', Tippett only began writing down the notes when he had a clear concept of the structure and character of the piece in question. He invariably composed straight into full score: and he always started at the beginning of the piece, continuing until he reached the end – then he stopped. Taken overall, this kind of compositional procedure is fairly unusual" (Meirion Bowen).
The composer Andrew Ford
relates this revealing anecdote: "the first time I...met him, as a student composer..., he...[gave] me some very valuable advice. I had just completed a piece which was extremely complex and I was very proud of it, but then it was played and I had never heard anything so boring. For all my use of mathematical procedures, there was nothing of interest in the music. Tippett ... said, 'Just use your ears, love.'"
' under the astrological
sign of Aquarius
The twin themes are the artist as himself and the artist in relation to society.
In 1991 his autobiography Those Twentieth Century Blues was published. Among other insights, this book contains a selection of Tippett's dreams. Peter Heyworth has made the observation that the dreams' "relevance to his creative life became increasingly evident. In particular, the series of works that were to establish his reputation during and after the war and to culminate in The Midsummer Marriage...hove into view. The therapy had worked..." A final collection of the composer's writings was published in 1995 under the title Tippett on Music.
Order of Merit
The Order of Merit is a British dynastic order recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture...
CH
Order of the Companions of Honour
The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded by King George V in June 1917, as a reward for outstanding achievements in the arts, literature, music, science, politics, industry or religion....
CBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(2 January 1905 – 8 January 1998) was an English composer.
In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music. The works for which he is best known are the Concerto for Double String Orchestra
Concerto for Double String Orchestra
Michael Tippett's Concerto for Double String Orchestra is one of the British composer's most popular and frequently performed works....
, the oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
A Child of our Time
A Child of Our Time
A Child of Our Time is an oratorio written by Michael Tippett between 1939 and 1941."After more than ten years of thoughtful planning, Michael Tippett summed up his musical, political, spiritual and philosophical beliefs in his first oratorio, A Child of Our Time...
and the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli
Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli
Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli, also known as the Corelli Fantasia, is a work for string orchestra by the British composer Michael Tippett...
.
His deeply-held humanitarian
Humanitarianism
In its most general form, humanitarianism is an ethic of kindness, benevolence and sympathy extended universally and impartially to all human beings. Humanitarianism has been an evolving concept historically but universality is a common element in its evolution...
and pacifist
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
beliefs shaped both his life and his music: he served a prison sentence as a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
in the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. An interest in many aspects of contemporary culture is reflected in his music and writings. Tippett was one of the first openly gay composers to explore issues of sexuality in his work. The libretti of his operas, which he wrote himself, attracted criticism for their apparent naivety and sometimes awkward and not quite idiomatic use of contemporary slang, as well as for their sometimes obscure extra-musical references. He had a keen interest in musical education and in later life was active as a broadcaster and lecturer. As a conductor he recorded many of his own works. He is generally acknowledged to be one of the most important British composers of the 20th century.
1905–98
Tippett was born in London in 1905, the younger of two boys. His father, Henry William Tippett (1858–1944), came from an old CornishCornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
family. A lawyer and entrepreneur, his investments included the Lyceum Theatre, London and a hotel in Cannes
Cannes
Cannes is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Commune of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department....
, France. His mother, Isabel Clementina Binny Kemp (1880–1969) trained as a nurse. She was a novelist and playwright, a member of the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
and a suffragette
Suffragette
"Suffragette" is a term coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for members of the late 19th and early 20th century movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, in particular members of the Women's Social and Political Union...
who went to prison for her beliefs.
In the year of his birth, the family moved to Wetherden
Wetherden
Wetherden is a village in the county of Suffolk, England.Recorded in the Domesday book as 'Watdena' or 'Wederdena'The village has an estimated population of 540....
in rural Suffolk
Suffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
. He had a happy and active childhood, enjoying home theatricals and singing in the church choir. From an early age he showed an aptitude for music. Despite their liberal views his parents knew little about music as a profession and were bemused when, aged ten, he told them that he wanted to become a composer. At preparatory school in Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
he wrote an essay disproving the existence of God. He was sent to Fettes College
Fettes College
Fettes College is an independent school for boarding and day pupils in Edinburgh, Scotland with over two thirds of its pupils in residence on campus...
near Edinburgh, which he hated. After admitting an affair with another boy, his parents removed him. The remaining years of his school education were at Stamford School
Stamford School
Stamford School is an English independent school situated in the market town of Stamford, Lincolnshire, England. It has been a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference since 1920.-History:...
in Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
. Here he flourished, learning piano and harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
with Frances Tinkler, a dedicated and supportive mentor. His first experience of modern music was hearing Ravel's
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
Mother Goose
Ma Mère l'Oye
Ma mère l'oye is a musical work by French composer Maurice Ravel.-Piano versions:Ravel originally wrote Ma mère l'oye as a piano duet for the Godebski children, Mimi and Jean, ages 6 and 7. Ravel dedicated this work for four hands to the children...
suite at a concert in Leicester
Leicester
Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...
conducted by Malcolm Sargent
Malcolm Sargent
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works...
. From that moment on, he knew he had to be a composer.
Financial difficulties after the First World War forced his parents to sell their home and live in the Cannes hotel. In time this too was sold and the family lived an unsettled existence moving around Europe. Tippett spent vacations with them, learning French and Italian and acquiring at an early age an easy familiarity with European people and manners. At school Tippett's atheism
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
and general rebelliousness prompted the headmaster to ask that he be removed to lodgings in the town, out of bounds to the other boys. In the meantime he bought a copy of Stanford's
Charles Villiers Stanford
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was an Irish composer who was particularly notable for his choral music. He was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge.- Life :...
Musical Composition, and set about teaching himself to compose. A chance encounter with a musician on a train led to an interview with the Principal of the Royal College of Music
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
in London. Tippett was accepted, despite his lack of musical knowledge. His parents agreed to pay his fees on condition that he aim to become a Doctor of Music
Doctor of Music
The Doctor of Music degree , like other doctorates, is an academic degree of the highest level. The D.Mus. is intended for musicians and composers who wish to combine the highest attainments in their area of specialization with doctoral-level academic study in music...
, and in the summer of 1923 he began studies at the RCM.
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
at the Promenade Concerts, Palestrina
Palestrina
Palestrina is an ancient city and comune with a population of about 18,000, in Lazio, c. 35 km east of Rome...
mass
Mass
Mass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...
es at Westminster Cathedral
Westminster Cathedral
Westminster Cathedral in London is the mother church of the Catholic community in England and Wales and the Metropolitan Church and Cathedral of the Archbishop of Westminster...
to Mozart opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
s at the Old Vic
Old Vic
The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian...
. Through new friends he was able to pursue his interest in theatre.
Tippett's first composition tutor was Charles Wood
Charles Wood (composer)
Charles Wood was an Irish composer and teacher.Born in Armagh, Ireland, he was the fifth child and third son of Charles Wood Sr. and Jemima Wood. His father was a tenor in the choir of the nearby St. Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh , and later worked as the Diocesan Registrar of the church...
, who used the works of the established masters – Bach, Mozart, Beethoven – as models, stressing the importance of a solid understanding of musical forms and syntax. Tippett had always felt that he lacked a secure technique and welcomed this rigorous approach. When Wood died, he decided not to study with Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
, then a member of the RCM teaching staff. Rather than become a mere imitator of the great man, he chose instead a pedantic teacher, Dr C.H. Kitson. The relationship between teacher and pupil was at times strained. Kitson's teaching was harmony-based, and Tippett's natural style was contrapuntal
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
. He persevered, however, and after four years had built the foundations of a solid compositional technique. His piano studies with Aubin Raymar were less successful, but from Malcolm Sargent
Malcolm Sargent
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works...
and Adrian Boult
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...
he learned a working knowledge of the orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
and conducting
Conducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
. He graduated in 1928 after failing the exams at the first attempt.
1929–34
Tippett did not stay long in London. An invitation to conduct a concert and operatic society in OxtedOxted
Oxted is a commuter town in Surrey, England at the foot of the North Downs, north of East Grinstead and south-east of Croydon.- History :The town lay within the Anglo-Saxon administrative division of Tandridge hundred....
, Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
entailed a move back to the rural environment that he knew and loved. Exciting as London had been, he needed space and quiet to compose. In 1929 he rented a small cottage on the North Downs
North Downs
The North Downs are a ridge of chalk hills in south east England that stretch from Farnham in Surrey to the White Cliffs of Dover in Kent. The North Downs lie within two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty , the Surrey Hills and the Kent Downs...
, formed a madrigal
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
group and took up a teaching post at a local school. With help from his father, he was able to build a bungalow at nearby Limpsfield
Limpsfield
Limpsfield is a village and parish in the east of the county of Surrey, England near Oxted at the foot of the North Downs. It lies between the A25 to the south and the M25 motorway to the north, near the Clackett Lane service station...
. At the local Barn Theatre Tippett undertook productions of a number of stage works, including his own version of the 18th century ballad opera The Village Opera
Love in a Village
Love in a Village is a ballad opera in three acts that was composed and arranged by Thomas Arne. A pastiche, the work contains 42 musical numbers of which only five were newly composed works by Arne. The other music is made up of 13 pieces borrowed from Arne's earlier stage works, a new overture...
. He conducted two complete performances of Handel's
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
Messiah
Messiah (Handel)
Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...
, a rare event at the time. Having loved the stage since his schooldays, he relished the opportunity to improve his knowledge of stagecraft and to study the challenges of word setting in the different disciplines of opera and oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
.
Tippett's own music began to feature in the Oxted programmes, and in April 1930 a concert took place consisting entirely of his own compositions. Though favourably received by the press – The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
described his music as having "a personal distinction and sincerity which is absent from the work of the Central European composers of today" – the experience convinced Tippett that he still lacked a watertight technique. He withdrew the pieces and arranged further study with R. O. Morris
R. O. Morris
Reginald Owen Morris , almost universally cited in sources and referred to even by his friends by his initials, as 'R.O. Morris', was a British composer whose compositions have been overshadowed by his formidable reputation as a teacher.He was born in York...
, an expert on 16th century polyphony
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
who had already taught Tippett at the RCM. A rigorous training ensued, during which he learned to write fugues in the style of Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
. These eighteen months were probably the most formative in the composer's life. Under Morris's guidance he finally achieved the mastery of counterpoint that had long been his goal.
Tippett accepted his homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
from an early age, but felt disturbed by a feeling of exclusion from 'normal life':
"[B]eing unable to enter into a biological relationship with a woman, it seemed that I was excluded from an understanding of half the human race." He was also keenly aware of parental disapproval of his sexuality. With his good looks, charm and charisma, Tippett was a magnet for both men and women. He had a number of intense, emotional friendships with women, some of whom undoubtedly wanted more. One such was Evelyn Maude, an amateur cellist with whom he had a close, supportive friendship. Deeply in love with Tippett, her role was that of confidante, almost like an elder sister. Equally intense was his friendship with Francesca Allinson, a musician and musicologist. At one time they contemplated adopting children. Her suicide at the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
affected him profoundly. But it was a young painter, Wilfred Franks, who inspired the composer's first real love experience. In Tippett's own words, his relationship with Franks was "the deepest, most shattering experience of falling in love", and "a major factor underlying the discovery of my own individual musical 'voice'. "
While hiking with Franks in the North, Tippett was horrified by the sight of under-nourished children. The experience convinced him that "somewhere music could have a direct relation also to the compassion that was so deep in my heart". From then on, he sought to combine music-making with political action. He gave up the school teaching job and took on the conductorship of a number of amateur choirs. At a concert in London's East End
East End of London
The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, United Kingdom, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary...
he encouraged choir members to bring food for the audience as well as for themselves. Through his friend David Ayerst, Tippett went to work at experimental farms for the unemployed in Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
. There he mounted a special version of The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...
for local people to perform. Its success led to the composition of a new work: the ballad opera Robin Hood
Robin Hood (opera)
For the comic opera by Reginald De Koven, see Robin Hood .Robin Hood is a ballad opera by Michael Tippett based on the legend of Robin Hood. Composed in 1934, the score remains unpublished...
. Although never published, Tippett reworked some of the material in his 1948 Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles. He began to conduct the South London Orchestra, made up largely of theatre musicians made redundant by the arrival of the 'talkies'
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
. Through Francesca Allinson he met the Marxist composer Alan Bush
Alan Bush
Alan Dudley Bush was a British composer and pianist. He was a committed socialist, and politics sometimes provided central themes in his music.-Personal life:...
, who was the conductor of the London Labour Choral Union.Tippett conducted the orchestra at the Pageant of Labour
Pageant of Labour
The Pageant of Labour was a large-scale musical and dramatic show held at The Crystal Palace, London, England, on 15–20 October 1934. With words by Matthew Anderson and music by Alan Bush, it celebrated the history of the British labour movement, and like most pageants of the era was a...
at the Crystal Palace on 15–20 October 1934.
Tippett's political leanings reflected his love of personal freedom and dislike of oppressive authority. Thus he embraced Trotsky's
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
internationalism
Proletarian internationalism
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is a Marxist social class concept based on the view that capitalism is now a global system, and therefore the working class must act as a global class if it is to defeat it...
over Stalin's
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
rigidly controlled and centralised state. He joined the Communist Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
in 1935, but left after failing to subvert it to Trotskyism
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
. In 1935 Tippett wrote an agitprop
Agitprop
Agitprop is derived from agitation and propaganda, and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message....
play, War Ramp, about the role of public credit in the financing of war. Although the logic of the play's argument seemed to lead to the advocacy of violent revolution, he rejected this. By gradual stages, he was drawn to pacifism
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
. Faced with the twin evils of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
and Stalin's labour camps
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
, he became one of 100,000 people to take up the pledge of the Rev. Dick Sheppard
Hugh Richard Lawrie Sheppard
Hugh Richard Lawrie "Dick" Sheppard was an English Anglican priest, Dean of Canterbury and pacifist....
: 'I renounce war and never again, directly or indirectly, will I support or sanction another.' The result was the Peace Pledge Union
Peace Pledge Union
The Peace Pledge Union is a British pacifist non-governmental organization. It is open to everyone who can sign the PPU pledge: "I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support any kind of war...
. Tippett became a prominent member and eventually its president. One of his last public acts was to unveil the Commemorative Stone to Conscientious Objectors in Tavistock Square
Tavistock Square
Tavistock Square is a public square in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden with a fine garden.-Public art:The centre-piece of the gardens is a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, which was installed in 1968....
, Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury
-Places:* Bloomsbury is an area in central London.* Bloomsbury , related local government unit* Bloomsbury, New Jersey, New Jersey, USA* Bloomsbury , listed on the NRHP in Maryland...
, London, on 15 May 1994, International Conscientious Objectors' Day.
1935–44
In December 1935 the Brosa Quartet gave the first performance of Tippett's String Quartet in A, his first acknowledged work. Although he later replaced the opening two movements with a single one, the music bears all the hallmarks of his mature style. A symphony in B flat from the same year was performed but later withdrawn. The quartet was followed by the First Piano Sonata, the Concerto for Double String OrchestraConcerto for Double String Orchestra
Michael Tippett's Concerto for Double String Orchestra is one of the British composer's most popular and frequently performed works....
, the Fantasia on a Theme of Handel and the oratorio A Child of Our Time
A Child of Our Time
A Child of Our Time is an oratorio written by Michael Tippett between 1939 and 1941."After more than ten years of thoughtful planning, Michael Tippett summed up his musical, political, spiritual and philosophical beliefs in his first oratorio, A Child of Our Time...
.
The period leading up to the composition of this, Tippett's first major work and the one for which he is still best known, was one of turmoil for the composer. He went through an acute emotional crisis after Franks announced his plans to marry, and turned to Jungian
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
self-analysis. For nine months Tippett wrote down all his dreams, stopping three days before the outbreak of the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. His final recorded dream, in which he imagined he was strangled by four men, seemed to him a sign of impending rebirth. On the day war was declared, 3 September 1939, Tippett began to write the music for A Child of Our Time. Tippett had originally conceived the idea of an opera based on the Irish Easter Rising
Easter Rising
The Easter Rising was an insurrection staged in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was mounted by Irish republicans with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing the Irish Republic at a time when the British Empire was heavily engaged in the First World War...
of 1916. But an event occurred that provided him with a scenario ideally fitted to his conception of a work both contemporary and in the grand choral tradition of Bach's Passions and Handel's Messiah. The 1938 shooting of a German diplomat by a young Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan
Herschel Grynszpan
Herschel Feibel Grynszpan was a Polish Jew and political assassin. Grynszpan's assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath on November 7, 1938, after the deportation of his family, provided the excuse for the Nazi Kristallnacht, the antisemitic pogrom of November 9–10, 1938...
, led directly to the worst anti-Jewish pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
of the pre-war years, culminating in the events of Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...
on 9 November when thousands of Jewish homes, shops and premises in Germany and Austria were ransacked and burned. Tippett shared in the widespread public horror and felt impelled to respond.
A few years previously he had formed a friendship with the poet and playwright T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
. Eliot was to be one of the most influential figures in his professional life, and Tippett often described him as his "spiritual father". Of particular importance was the older man's advice on the relationship between words and music and the problems involved in setting texts. Tippett asked Eliot to write the libretto for his new oratorio, but the poet refused, feeling that Tippett had already written a major part and that his contribution would compete with the music for attention. A Child of Our Time was completed in 1941 but not performed until 1944. During this time Tippett was steadily gaining critical recognition for his work. Though he had few performances of his music, and the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, the International Society for Contemporary Music
International Society for Contemporary Music
The International Society for Contemporary Music is a music organization that promotes contemporary classical music.ISCM was established in 1922, in Salzburg. Its core activity is the World Music Days Festival, held every year at a different location. The festival includes cutting edge productions...
(ISCM) Festival and the publishers Boosey & Hawkes
Boosey & Hawkes
Boosey & Hawkes is a British music publisher purported to be the largest specialist classical music publisher in the world. Until 2003, it was also a major manufacturer of brass, string and wind musical instruments....
all turned down the Concerto for Double String Orchestra (later to be one of his most popular works), a private recording of the First Piano Sonata by Phyllis Sellick
Phyllis Sellick
Phyllis Sellick, OBE was a British pianist and teacher, best known for her partnership with her pianist husband Cyril Smith.-Biography:...
attracted favourable reviews. William Glock
William Glock
Sir William Frederick Glock was a British music critic and musical administrator.-Biography:Glock was born in London. He read history at the University of Cambridge and was an organ scholar at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge...
, writing in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, hailed it and the recently premiered Second String Quartet by announcing that "A new composer has emerged in English music", The publishers Schott
Schott Music
Schott Music is one of the oldest German music publishers. It is also one of the largest music publishing houses in Europe and is currently the second oldest music publishing house. The company headquarters of Schott Music was founded by Bernhard Schott in Mainz, Germany in 1770.Established in...
agreed to publish the Piano Sonata and the Concerto for Double String Orchestra. They remained Tippett's publishers for the rest of his life.
Tippett was invited in 1940 to become the director of music at Morley College
Morley College
Morley College is an adult education college in London, England. It was founded in the 1880s and has a student population of 10,806 adult students...
in South London. In the eleven years of his tenure the choir grew from 10 to nearly 50. Tippett appointed a number of former refugees to his staff including the composer Matyas Seiber
Mátyás Seiber
Mátyás György Seiber was a Hungarian-born composer who lived and worked in England from 1935 onward.-Career:Seiber was born in Budapest, and studied there with Zoltán Kodály, with whom he toured Hungary collecting folk songs. In 1928, he became director of the jazz department at the Hoch...
, the conductor Walter Goehr
Walter Goehr
Walter Goehr was a German composer and conductor.Goehr was born in Berlin where studied with Arnold Schoenberg and embarked on a conducting career, before being forced as a Jew to seek employment outside Germany, while working for Berlin Radio in 1932. He was invited to become music director for...
and three of the future members of the Amadeus Quartet
Amadeus Quartet
The Amadeus Quartet was a world famous string quartet founded in 1947.Because of their Jewish origin, violinists Norbert Brainin, Siegmund Nissel and Peter Schidlof were driven out of Vienna after Hitler's Anschluss of 1938...
. He brought the countertenor
Countertenor
A countertenor is a male singing voice whose vocal range is equivalent to that of a contralto, mezzo-soprano, or a soprano, usually through use of falsetto, or far more rarely than normal, modal voice. A pre-pubescent male who has this ability is called a treble...
Alfred Deller
Alfred Deller
Alfred George Deller CBE , was an English singer and one of the main figures in popularizing the return of the countertenor voice in Renaissance and Baroque music during the 20th Century....
from Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, Kent, is one of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in England and forms part of a World Heritage Site....
to sing solos in Purcell
Purcell
Henry Purcell was an English composer.Purcell may also refer to:*Purcell, Indiana, an unincorporated community in Johnson Township, Knox County, Indiana*Purcell, Missouri, a city in Jasper County, Missouri, United States...
Odes, gave performances of Monteverdi's
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
Vespers (1610) and Stravinsky's
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
Les Noces
Les Noces
Les noces by Igor Stravinsky, is a dance cantata, or ballet with vocalists.-History:The ballet was premiered on June 13, 1923 at the Théâtre de la Gaîté, by the Ballets Russes with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska...
, and recorded Tallis's
Thomas Tallis
Thomas Tallis was an English composer. Tallis flourished as a church musician in 16th century Tudor England. He occupies a primary place in anthologies of English church music, and is considered among the best of England's early composers. He is honoured for his original voice in English...
40-part motet
Motet
In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...
Spem in Alium
Spem in alium
Spem in alium is a forty-part Renaissance motet by Thomas Tallis, composed circa 1570 for eight choirs of five voices each. The sacred text has been used as a basis for other choral settings, such as and the...
.
Tippett's pacifism led him to issue a statement rejecting war and affirming the right of artists not to be conscripted. He registered as a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
, but refused to accept a condition that would have required his giving up his work at Morley College. His friends and admirers, among them Vaughan Williams, tried to dissuade him but he stood firm. In June 1943 Tippett was sentenced to three months at Wormwood Scrubs
Wormwood Scrubs
Wormwood Scrubs, known locally as The Scrubs, is an open space located in the north-eastern corner of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London. It is the largest open space in the Borough, at 80 ha , and one of the largest areas of common land in London...
. His immediate cell neighbours were a rapist and a murderer. He sewed mailbags, studied Bach's The Art of Fugue
The Art of Fugue
The Art of Fugue , BWV 1080, is an incomplete work by Johann Sebastian Bach . It was most likely started at the beginning of the 1740s, if not earlier. The first known surviving version, which contained 12 fugues and 2 canons, was copied by the composer in 1745...
and assisted the small prison orchestra. When he was released he felt he had "come home". For his mother it was her "proudest moment".
In 1943 Tippett met Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
and his partner, the tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
Peter Pears
Peter Pears
Sir Peter Neville Luard Pears CBE was an English tenor who was knighted in 1978. His career was closely associated with the composer Edward Benjamin Britten....
. He invited them to perform at Morley College and they stayed at his home at Oxted. The cantata Boyhood's End, composed for Britten and Pears, reflected a common interest in Purcell
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
. When Tippett showed him the score of A Child of Our Time Britten was enthusiastic about the work and urged him to get it performed. The premiere took place on 19 March 1944 at Adelphi Theatre
Adelphi Theatre
The Adelphi Theatre is a 1500-seat West End theatre, located on the Strand in the City of Westminster. The present building is the fourth on the site. The theatre has specialised in comedy and musical theatre, and today it is a receiving house for a variety of productions, including many musicals...
. Pears was one of the soloists and Goehr conducted. The reaction of the critics was mostly favourable. Glock, writing in The Observer, declared it "the most moving and important work written by an English musician for many years". Performances in Europe followed and made a profound impact.
1945–59
Two major works followed the success of A Child of Our Time. The First SymphonySymphony No. 1 (Tippett)
The Symphony No. 1 by the British composer Michael Tippett was completed in 1945.- Instrumentation :The symphony is scored for 3 flutes , 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion : bass drum, cymbals and strings.-Form:The...
was given its first performance in 1945, conducted by Sargent, while the Third Quartet was premiered in 1946 by the Zorian Quartet.
Tippett was meanwhile planning what was to be his biggest and most personal statement to date, the opera The Midsummer Marriage
The Midsummer Marriage
The Midsummer Marriage is an opera in three acts, with music and libretto by Michael Tippett. The work's first performance was at Covent Garden, 27 January 1955, conducted by John Pritchard...
. Uncommissioned, it took six years to write and placed severe physical and emotional demands on its composer. The libretto was Tippett's own. Other works from this period are the Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles, commissioned in 1948 by the BBC, the song-cycle The Heart's Assurance, written in memory of Francesca Allinson and first performed in 1951 by Britten and Pears, and the 1953 Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli
Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli
Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli, also known as the Corelli Fantasia, is a work for string orchestra by the British composer Michael Tippett...
. Now one of Tippett's most popular and frequently performed works, it attracted criticism at the time. Sargent refused to conduct the first performance as he thought it overburdened with notes. He told Tippett's publisher Howard Hartog that his "one interest" was "removing all this intellectualism from English music". The Times thought it too complex and difficult to listen to: "The excessive complexity of the contrapuntal writing in the earlier part of the work defeated its own ends; there was so much going on that the perplexed ear knew not where to turn or fasten itself."
Denigration of Tippett reached a climax with the first production of The Midsummer Marriage at Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
in 1955. Many of the critics attacked the libretto as obscure or even incomprehensible. It was claimed that the cast were in confusion about the plot. The music, however, was more warmly received. Subsequent productions and recordings have won the opera widespread admiration: the 1968 LP recording sold 3,750 copies in its first week of sale in the United States.
Controversy also surrounded the premieres of two other major works of the 1950s, the Piano Concerto (1955) and the Second Symphony
Symphony No. 2 (Tippett)
The Symphony No. 2 by the British composer Michael Tippett was completed in 1957.- Instrumentation :The symphony is scored for 2 Flutes, , 2 Oboes, 2 Clarinets in A, 2 Bassoons, 4 Horns, 2 Trumpets, 3 Trombones, Tuba, Timpani, Percussion : Side drum, Bass drum, Cymbals, Harp, Piano and...
(1957). The concerto was declared unplayable by its appointed soloist, Julius Katchen
Julius Katchen
Julius Katchen was an American concert pianist, possibly best known for his recordings of Johannes Brahms's solo piano compositions.-Early career:...
, and he was replaced by Louis Kentner
Louis Kentner
Louis Kentner was a Hungarian, later British, pianist who excelled in the works of Chopin and Liszt, as well as the Hungarian repertoire....
. At the symphony's first performance, the music broke down a few minutes into the first movement and the performance had to be restarted. Sir Adrian Boult, conducting, told the audience that he was to blame. It later transpired that the orchestra's leader had altered the bowing of the string parts to make them more readable, and in so doing obliterated the natural off-beat phrasing that Tippett had carefully notated. Tippett received support when the conductor John Barbirolli
John Barbirolli
Sir John Barbirolli, CH was an English conductor and cellist. Born in London, of Italian and French parentage, he grew up in a family of professional musicians. His father and grandfather were violinists...
, himself a string player, approved the original notation of the parts.
1960–76
Tippett's second opera King PriamKing Priam
King Priam is an opera by Michael Tippett, to his own libretto. The story is based on Homer's Iliad, except the birth and childhood of Paris, which are taken from the Fabulae of Hyginus.The premiere was on 29 May 1962, at Coventry...
was produced by the Royal Opera in 1962 as part of the festival to mark the opening of the new Coventry Cathedral
Coventry Cathedral
Coventry Cathedral, also known as St Michael's Cathedral, is the seat of the Bishop of Coventry and the Diocese of Coventry, in Coventry, West Midlands, England. The current bishop is the Right Revd Christopher Cocksworth....
. The following night Britten's War Requiem
War Requiem
The War Requiem, Op. 66 is a large-scale, non-liturgical setting of the Requiem Mass composed by Benjamin Britten mostly in 1961 and completed January 1962. Interspersed with the traditional Latin texts, in telling juxtaposition, are settings of Wilfred Owen poems...
had its premiere. This time there was less criticism of the libretto, which Tippett had extracted from the epic poems of Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, than of the music. In contrast to the radiant lyricism of The Midsummer Marriage, the sound-world was stark and austere, with notable use of brass and percussion. The terseness of the libretto was reflected in a new intensity, economy, and fragmentation. A similar approach can be seen in other works from this period: the Second Piano Sonata (1962), the Concerto for Orchestra (1963) and The Vision of Saint Augustine (1965).
In 1960 Tippett moved into a house in Corsham
Corsham
Corsham is a historic market town and civil parish in north west Wiltshire, England. It is at the south western extreme of the Cotswolds, just off the A4 which was formerly the main turnpike road from London to Bristol, between Bath and Chippenham ....
, Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
with his partner Karl Hawker, a young painter. Hawker and he had previously been living in somewhat strained circumstances with Tippett's mother in an old manor-house in Wadhurst
Wadhurst
Wadhurst is a market town in East Sussex, England. It is the centre of the civil parish of Wadhurst, which also includes the hamlets of Cousley Wood and Tidebrook. Wadhurst is twinned with Aubers in France.-Situation:...
, Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
. He took up a post as music adviser at the nearby Bath Academy of Art and invited young composers to his house, including Harrison Birtwistle
Harrison Birtwistle
Sir Harrison Paul Birtwistle CH is a British contemporary composer.-Life:Birtwistle was born in Accrington, a mill town in Lancashire some 20 miles north of Manchester. His interest in music was encouraged by his mother, who bought him a clarinet when he was seven, and arranged for him to have...
, Peter Maxwell Davies
Peter Maxwell Davies
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, CBE is an English composer and conductor and is currently Master of the Queen's Music.-Biography:...
, Alexander Goehr
Alexander Goehr
Alexander Goehr is an English composer and academic.Goehr was born in Berlin in 1932, the son of the conductor and Schoenberg pupil Walter Goehr. In his early twenties he emerged as a central figure in the Manchester School of post-war British composers. In 1955–56 he joined Oliver Messiaen's...
. From the mid-1960s until the early 1970s, Tippett had a close relationship with the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra
Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra
The Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra is a youth orchestra based in Leicester, England. The players, aged between 15 and 18, are all drawn from secondary schools in the county of Leicestershire and the City of Leicester.-History:...
(LSSO), conducting them regularly in the UK and on tour in Europe. For them he composed The Shires Suite, one of his most accessible works. He found time to serve on the music committee of the British Council
British Council
The British Council is a United Kingdom-based organisation specialising in international educational and cultural opportunities. It is registered as a charity both in England and Wales, and in Scotland...
and on the advisory panel to the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. His services to music were recognised by the award of a CBE
CBE
CBE and C.B.E. are abbreviations for "Commander of the Order of the British Empire", a grade in the Order of the British Empire.Other uses include:* Chemical and Biochemical Engineering...
in 1959 and a knighthood in 1966.
Tippett's first visit to America in 1965 was a watershed in his life and work. Invited as guest composer to the music festival in Aspen
Aspen
Populus section Populus, of the Populus genus, includes the aspen trees and the white poplar Populus alba. The five typical aspens are all native to cold regions with cool summers, in the north of the Northern Hemisphere, extending south at high altitudes in the mountains. The White Poplar, by...
, Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
, he loved the wide open landscapes and the warmth and candour of the young Americans he met. The experience changed him and his music. The most immediate impact was on the shaping of the libretto for his third opera, The Knot Garden
The Knot Garden
The Knot Garden is the third opera by composer Michael Tippett for which he wrote the original English libretto. The work had its first performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 2 December 1970 conducted by Sir Colin Davis and produced by Sir Peter Hall...
. Set in a modern city garden, its complex tangle of relationships and open exploration of sexuality are clearly influenced by 1960s American theatre and cinema. Musically, the opera draws on Tippett's love of jazz and blues, and the orchestra line-up includes electric guitar
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
and drums. A striking feature is the use of novel, quasi-cinematic musical 'dissolves' and cross-cutting forward and back in time. The first production was directed by Peter Hall at Covent Garden in 1970 and revived in 1972.
Tippett continued to confront both personal and public demons in his Third Symphony of 1973. The finale, quoting from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)
The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is the final complete symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven. Completed in 1824, the symphony is one of the best known works of the Western classical repertoire, and has been adapted for use as the European Anthem...
, contains settings of his own texts that attempt to find a response to the horrors of the Holocaust. Here, as in A Child of Our Time, Tippett turns to the blues for spiritual and emotional solace, and in his writing for solo soprano achieved perhaps his most successful and moving tribute to Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s...
, an artist he had long admired.
1977–98
The final two decades of Tippett's life saw no decline in his creative energy. The Third Symphony was quickly followed by a FourthSymphony No. 4 (Tippett)
Michael Tippett's Symphony No. 4 was written in 1977 and first performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the symphony's dedicatee Sir Georg Solti.It is written in one movement divided into seven sections:#Introduction and exposition...
. Commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and first performed by them in 1977 under Georg Solti
Georg Solti
Sir Georg Solti, KBE, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his...
, its one-movement form encompasses the traditional four-movements of the classical symphony. Tippett described it as a 'birth to death' piece. Chamber works from the 1970s include the Third Piano Sonata, first performed by Paul Crossley
Paul Crossley
Paul Crossley is a British pianist.Born in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, his piano teacher was Fanny Waterman in Leeds. While a student at Mansfield College, Oxford, he was discovered by Olivier Messiaen and his wife Yvonne Loriod, who heard him play and immediately invited him to come to Paris to study...
at the 1973 Bath Festival
Bath International Music Festival
The Bath International Music Festival, also known as the Bath Music Fest, is held each summer in Bath, South West England. Inaugurated in 1948, the festival includes many genres such as orchestral, contemporary jazz, folk and electronica...
(Tippett was artistic director of the festival from 1969–1974) and the Fourth String Quartet, premiered by the Lindsay String Quartet at Bath in 1979. These artists were among a growing number whose committed advocacy of the composer helped his music to reach a wider audience. Chief among them was the conductor Colin Davis
Colin Davis
Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE is an English conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett....
. His recordings of the four symphonies, operas and choral works have set a benchmark for all later interpretations.
The Ice Break
The Ice Break
The Ice Break is an opera in three acts by Michael Tippett, to an original English libretto by the composer. It was first produced at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 7 July 1977, conducted by Colin Davis, the dedicatee of the opera....
, Tippett's fourth opera, was beset by production difficulties. At its Covent Garden premiere in 1977 it received a mixed reception. The libretto was attacked for its use of contemporary slang and the plot, featuring race riots and a psychedelic
Psychedelic
The term psychedelic is derived from the Greek words ψυχή and δηλοῦν , translating to "soul-manifesting". A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly...
'trip', was held by some to be sensational. Further productions have strengthened the work's reputation, but it remains one of the least-performed of Tippett's major works.
From 1970 onward Tippett experienced health problems. His eyesight grew worse as a result of macular dystrophy
Vitelliform macular dystrophy
Vitelliform macular dystrophy or vitelliform dystrophy is a genetic eye disorder that can cause progressive vision loss. This disorder affects the retina, specifically cells in a small area near the center of the retina called the macula...
and he began to need special large-sized manuscript paper to see the notes. With the help of his musical amanuensis Michael Tillett and his personal assistant, travelling companion and close friend Meirion Bowen he was able to complete his later scores. A move to a modern house in the middle of rolling fields near Calne
Calne
Calne is a town in Wiltshire, southwestern England. It is situated at the northwestern extremity of the North Wessex Downs hill range, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty....
in Wiltshire gave Tippett the privacy he wanted, as well as providing a setting for him to entertain his many friends and musical admirers. His relationship with Karl Hawker had greatly deteriorated by the time of the move. Hawker left to live in London and in 1984 he committed suicide.
Tippett's music increased greatly in popularity during the 1970s, thanks in part to the recordings made by Philips. His seventieth birthday in January 1975 coincided with the showing on British television of the film Akenfield
Akenfield
Akenfield is a film made by Peter Hall in 1974, based loosely upon the book Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village by Ronald Blythe . It can claim a degree of cult status as a work of rural realism, unusual in relation to East Anglia...
, which made prominent use of the Fantasia Concertante on a theme of Corelli. In the United States his music was becoming widely known and performed, and he began to attract a following among young musicians: he was amused when four students turned up in Chicago in 1974 wearing 'Turn on to Tippett' T-shirts. A score of British Universities awarded him honorary doctorates, and further official recognition came with the award in 1983 of the Order of Merit
Order of Merit
The Order of Merit is a British dynastic order recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture...
.
After writing the gamelan-inspired Triple Concerto of 1979, Tippett concentrated on the composition of The Mask of Time, a large-scale, ambitious choral piece that was in some ways a summation of his life's work. Commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...
, its European premiere at the 1984 Proms was relayed on BBC television. The vast scope of the text, itself almost an anthropological survey taking in creation myths, world religions and man's impact on the planet, impressed critics and listeners alike, as did the similarly eclectic score. A series of world tours had inspired Tippett to extend his musical vocabulary to include exotic percussion and wordless choral effects.
A less favourable reception was given to his last opera, New Year
New Year
The New Year is the day that marks the time of the beginning of a new calendar year, and is the day on which the year count of the specific calendar used is incremented. For many cultures, the event is celebrated in some manner....
. At its Houston premiere in 1989 audiences were unimpressed by the futuristic space-age electronic sound effects and jokey subtitles. It fared better at Glyndebourne
Glyndebourne
Glyndebourne is a country house, thought to be about six hundred years old, located near Lewes in East Sussex, England. It is also the site of an opera house which, with the exception of its closing during the Second World War, for a few immediate post-war years, and in 1993 during the...
in 1990, but Tippett's bleak vision of 'Terror Town', where the sole unifying ritual is the singing of Auld Lang Syne
Auld Lang Syne
"Auld Lang Syne" is a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to the tune of a traditional folk song . It is well known in many countries, especially in the English-speaking world; its traditional use being to celebrate the start of the New Year at the stroke of midnight...
at the turn of the year, surprised and disturbed those who perhaps missed the astonishing youthful energy and inventiveness of the music. Tippett completed three more works in his late eighties: the Fifth String Quartet, Byzantium for soprano and orchestra and his final luminous orchestral masterpiece, The Rose Lake, inspired by a visit to Lake Retba
Lake Retba
Lake Retba or Lac Rose lies north of the Cap Vert peninsula of Senegal, north east of Dakar.It is so named for its pink waters, caused by cyanobacteria in the water. The color is particularly visible during the dry season. The lake is also known for its high salt content, which, like that of the...
in Senegal
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
in 1990. In 1996, Tippett moved from Wiltshire to London. In 1997, while in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
for a retrospective of his concert music, he developed pneumonia. He was brought home to England, where he died early in 1998.
Legacy
In 1979 Tippett set up The Michael Tippett Musical Foundation, a charitable trust whose initial income derived from the sale of most of his autograph manuscripts to the British Library.Among those composers who have acknowledged Tippett as an influence on their work are Mark-Anthony Turnage
Mark-Anthony Turnage
Mark-Anthony Turnage is a prolific English composer of classical music. His initial musical studies were with Oliver Knussen, John Lambert, and later with Gunther Schuller...
, David Matthews
David Matthews (composer)
David Matthews is an English composer of mainly orchestral, chamber, vocal and piano works.- Life :He was born in London into a family that was 'not especially' musical; the desire to compose did not manifest itself until he was sixteen, and for a time he and his younger brother Colin Matthews,...
, William Mathias
William Mathias
William Mathias CBE was a Welsh composer.-Brief biography:Mathias was born in Whitland, Carmarthenshire. A child prodigy, he started playing the piano at the age of three and composing at the age of five. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music under Lennox Berkeley, where he was elected a fellow...
and Edward Cowie
Edward Cowie
Edward Cowie is an English composer, author, Natural Scientist, and painter-Biography:Cowie was born in Birmingham, England in 1943 and spent most of his early life in the rural countryside...
.
Influences
Tippett assimilated many influences, from 16th century church musicChurch music
Church music may be defined as music written for performance in church, or any musical setting of ecclestiacal liturgy, or music set to words expressing propositions of a sacred nature, such as a hymn. This article covers music in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. For sacred music outside this...
and madrigals
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
, Purcell
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
, Bach, Handel, Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
, Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, Sibelius
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
, Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
and Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
to folk music
Traditional music
Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, jazz-rock and Bali
Bali
Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...
nese gamelan
Gamelan
A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....
music, eventually finding his own highly personal and expressive style.
From the long flowing lines and subtle interplay of voices in the music of Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...
and Byrd
William Byrd
William Byrd was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard and consort music.-Provenance:Knowledge of Byrd's biography expanded in the late 20th century, thanks largely...
, he learned how to write contrapuntally
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
. The rhythmic vitality of the English madrigal
English Madrigal School
The English Madrigal School was the brief but intense flowering of the musical madrigal in England, mostly from 1588 to 1627, along with the composers who produced them. The English madrigals were a cappella, predominantly light in style, and generally began as either copies or direct translations...
provided the model for the 'sprung' rhythms of his early works, such as the Concerto for Double String Orchestra
Concerto for Double String Orchestra
Michael Tippett's Concerto for Double String Orchestra is one of the British composer's most popular and frequently performed works....
. Purcell was a major influence, both for his idiomatic word-setting and his expressive use of dissonance
Consonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...
and 'false relation
False relation
A false relation is the name of a type of dissonance that sometimes occurs in classical polyphonic music, most commonly in vocal music of the Renaissance....
s' to convey anguish – this last being a common factor in the music of other 17th century composers, especially Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
and Dowland
John Dowland
John Dowland was an English Renaissance composer, singer, and lutenist. He is best known today for his melancholy songs such as "Come, heavy sleep" , "Come again", "Flow my tears", "I saw my Lady weepe" and "In darkness let me dwell", but his instrumental music has undergone a major revival, and has...
. Such non-functional harmony
Diatonic function
In tonal music theory, a diatonic function is the specific, recognized role of each of the 7 notes and their chords in relation to the diatonic key...
is characteristic too of the 'wrong-note' style of Stravinsky in the 1920s, as well as the 'blue' notes
Blue note
In jazz and blues, a blue note is a note sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is a semitone or less, but this varies among performers and genres. Country blues, in particular, features wide variations from the...
of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
.
Bach was less an inspiration than a mentor for Tippett, who was more drawn to the dramatic flair of Handel. Nevertheless he applied himself diligently to the study of Bach's fugue
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
s under Morris, a discipline which enabled him to write fugally with confident mastery. Beethoven remained a major obsession throughout his life. His influence can be seen principally in the symphonies and chamber works. The dynamic energy of Beethoven, the dramatic ebb and flow of his music and his use of strongly contrasting, even opposing elements to create a musical argument are all characteristic of Tippett's music. He described his Third Piano Sonata as his "late Beethoven sonata", and in the finale of the Third Symphony paid direct homage by quoting the opening bars of the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)
The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is the final complete symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven. Completed in 1824, the symphony is one of the best known works of the Western classical repertoire, and has been adapted for use as the European Anthem...
.
A feature of many of Tippett's early works is their use of irregular rhythms and pulse or 'additive rhythm'
Additive rhythm and divisive rhythm
In music, additive and divisive are terms used to distinguish two types of both rhythm and meter.A divisive rhythm is a rhythm in which a larger period of time is divided into smaller rhythmic units or, conversely, some integer unit is regularly multiplied into larger, equal units; this can be...
. This can be traced to a number of sources including folksongs
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
of the British Isles. A parallel can be found in the work of Stravinsky and Bartok, both of whom were inspired by the rhythms of folk music. Harmonically, both of these composers (and Hindemith) made use of harmonies based on the interval of a fourth – known as 'quartal'
Quartal and quintal harmony
In music, quartal harmony is the building of harmonic structures with a distinct preference for the intervals of the perfect fourth, the augmented fourth and the diminished fourth. Quintal harmony is harmonic structure preferring the perfect fifth, the augmented fifth and the diminished fifth...
– to replace the classic 'functional' harmony that had been around since at least 1600. Chords built up in fourths (or fifths) feature in many of Tippett's works, an example being the opening of the Piano Concerto.
Stylistic development
Unlike his near contemporaries WaltonWilliam Walton
Sir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera...
and Britten, Tippett was slow to mature. Having found his musical voice, it continued to develop throughout his career. In the process his music went through several changes of style; the most dramatic and far-reaching of these was associated with the composition of his second opera King Priam.
A different kind of change occurred after he visited in America in 1965. The impact of American culture, landscapes and people all pointed Tippett in a new direction. The immediate result was the claustrophobic, emotional hot-house of The Knot Garden, with its references to psychoanalysis, political extremism and sexual politics. Musically, the new elements were increased dissonance, complexity and the presence of electric guitar and jazz percussion in the orchestra pit. The Triple Concerto of 1979 saw a return to the melodic style of the early works, albeit with a darker orchestral palette coloured with exotic percussion. In his final years Tippett achieved a synthesis of all these elements in a richly allusive Expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
.
Broadly speaking, Tippett's music can be seen as falling into four distinct periods. The first period (1935–47) includes the first three quartets, the Concerto for Double String Orchestra
Concerto for Double String Orchestra
Michael Tippett's Concerto for Double String Orchestra is one of the British composer's most popular and frequently performed works....
, the oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
A Child of Our Time
A Child of Our Time
A Child of Our Time is an oratorio written by Michael Tippett between 1939 and 1941."After more than ten years of thoughtful planning, Michael Tippett summed up his musical, political, spiritual and philosophical beliefs in his first oratorio, A Child of Our Time...
and the First Symphony
Symphony No. 1 (Tippett)
The Symphony No. 1 by the British composer Michael Tippett was completed in 1945.- Instrumentation :The symphony is scored for 3 flutes , 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion : bass drum, cymbals and strings.-Form:The...
. This period is characterised by strenuous contrapuntal energy and deeply lyrical slow movements. The second period, from then until the late 1950s, includes the opera The Midsummer Marriage
The Midsummer Marriage
The Midsummer Marriage is an opera in three acts, with music and libretto by Michael Tippett. The work's first performance was at Covent Garden, 27 January 1955, conducted by John Pritchard...
, the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli
Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli
Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli, also known as the Corelli Fantasia, is a work for string orchestra by the British composer Michael Tippett...
, the Piano Concerto and the Second Symphony
Symphony No. 2 (Tippett)
The Symphony No. 2 by the British composer Michael Tippett was completed in 1957.- Instrumentation :The symphony is scored for 2 Flutes, , 2 Oboes, 2 Clarinets in A, 2 Bassoons, 4 Horns, 2 Trumpets, 3 Trombones, Tuba, Timpani, Percussion : Side drum, Bass drum, Cymbals, Harp, Piano and...
; this period features rich textures and effervescent melody. The third period, the 1960s and early '70s, is in stark contrast, and is characterised by abrupt statements and simplicity of texture, as in the opera King Priam
King Priam
King Priam is an opera by Michael Tippett, to his own libretto. The story is based on Homer's Iliad, except the birth and childhood of Paris, which are taken from the Fabulae of Hyginus.The premiere was on 29 May 1962, at Coventry...
, the Concerto for Orchestra and the Second Piano Sonata. The fourth period is a rich mixture of all these styles, using many devices, such as quotation (from Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
and Mussorgsky
Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period...
, among others). The main works of this period were the Third and Fourth Symphonies
Symphony No. 4 (Tippett)
Michael Tippett's Symphony No. 4 was written in 1977 and first performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the symphony's dedicatee Sir Georg Solti.It is written in one movement divided into seven sections:#Introduction and exposition...
, the operas The Ice Break
The Ice Break
The Ice Break is an opera in three acts by Michael Tippett, to an original English libretto by the composer. It was first produced at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 7 July 1977, conducted by Colin Davis, the dedicatee of the opera....
and New Year, and the large-scale choral work The Mask of Time.
While it is true that Tippett's music is not as obviously 'English' in style as composers of the so-called 'English pastoral school' - Vaughan Williams, Holst
Gustav Holst
Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....
and Delius
Frederick Delius
Frederick Theodore Albert Delius, CH was an English composer. Born in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family of German extraction, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce...
, and later Howells
Herbert Howells
Herbert Norman Howells CH was an English composer, organist, and teacher, most famous for his large output of Anglican church music.-Life:...
and Finzi
Gerald Finzi
Gerald Raphael Finzi was a British composer. Finzi is best known as a song-writer, but also wrote in other genres...
- there is an underlying thread of nature mysticism running through it which is as English as William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
, Samuel Palmer
Samuel Palmer
Samuel Palmer was a British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker. He was also a prolific writer. Palmer was a key figure in Romanticism in Britain and produced visionary pastoral paintings.-Early life:...
or John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
. Tippett lived most of life in the English countryside. He spent his childhood in rural Suffolk, only forty miles away from Britten's home town of Lowestoft
Lowestoft
Lowestoft is a town in the English county of Suffolk. The town is on the North Sea coast and is the most easterly point of the United Kingdom. It is north-east of London, north-east of Ipswich and south-east of Norwich...
in Suffolk.
In later life, his music room looked out onto the rolling Wiltshire downlands. In the words of the composer David Matthews
David Matthews (composer)
David Matthews is an English composer of mainly orchestral, chamber, vocal and piano works.- Life :He was born in London into a family that was 'not especially' musical; the desire to compose did not manifest itself until he was sixteen, and for a time he and his younger brother Colin Matthews,...
,
"There are passages in his music which evoke the 'sweet especial rural scene' as vividly as Elgar
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
or Vaughan Williams; passages (such as the Pastorale from the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli) perhaps redolent of the Suffolk landscape with its gently undulating horizons, wide skies and soft lights. But Tippett's music, unlike that of the previous generation, is not obviously nostalgic; there is no sense of loss, rather of a vision continually present."
Rhythm
A particular feature of Tippett's early works is their rhythmic and contrapuntal energy. This is the result of a number of factors, the primary one beinghis use of 'additive rhythm', where irregular groupings of notes create a fluid pulse quite unlike the rigid beat of previous classical composers such as Beethoven or Brahms. A good example is the finale of the First String Quartet. The music is light, buoyant and dance-like. Many of his themes use a type of syncopation found commonly in jazz and popular song, known as 'anticipatory rhythm'. Here the stress is thrown forward onto an unstressed offbeat, as in the opening subject of the Concerto for Double String Orchestra or the spiritual 'Nobody Knows the Trouble I See, Lord' from A Child of Our Time.
Counterpoint
Tippett's music derives much of its vigour, drive and energy from his contrapuntal writing. His studies with Morris gave him the confidence of a secure technique, allowing him to write polyphonic music with ease and assurance. After the First Symphony, his style became less severely linear, but his continuing love of fugue can be seen in works such as the Third String Quartet, where three out of the five movements are fugal, and the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli. Canons are another favourite device, as shown in the introduction to the aria 'The soul of man' in A Child of Our Time, where the restlessness of the music is subtly underlined by the use of canon by inversion.Harmony
The influence on Tippett of sixteenth-century counterpoint initially led him to assert that there was not a single chord in the works of his first period. Although untrue, his preference was for a linear approach rather than melody and accompaniment. After the First Symphony there emerged three main strands to his harmonic approach: classical triadic harmony, though with an originality and freshness all his own (for example Mark's first aria in the Midsummer Marriage); modal harmony deriving from folk song, blues and Purcell, and twentieth-century experimentation with chords in fourths and fifths by DebussyClaude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, Hindemith, Stravinsky and Bartok. His style remained broadly tonal until the Second Symphony, when it embraced polytonality. From King Priam onwards, dissonance and chromaticism
Chromaticism
Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism...
were to the fore, resulting in what some writers have called 'free atonality' or 'pantonality.'
Melody
Tippett had a lifelong fascination with folksong and dance. As a young man, he loved the Skye Boat Song and the Londonderry AirLondonderry Air
Londonderry Air is an air that originated from County Londonderry in Ireland. It is popular among the Irish diaspora and is very well known throughout the world. The tune is played as the victory anthem of Northern Ireland at the Commonwealth Games. "Danny Boy" is a popular set of lyrics to the...
, and was struck not only by their direct emotional appeal but by their melodic construction and careful placing of climaxes. Asked by a group of music students in Boston which twentieth-century composer he most admired, he replied, "Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
: because in an age of experimentation with rhythm...Gershwin kept song alive. In the "Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles (1948), Tippett reworked folk-like melodies from his earlier ballad opera Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
. He also used the Scottish hymn tune Crimond
Crimond
Crimond is a village in the northeast of Scotland, located nine miles northwest of the port of Peterhead and just over two miles from the coast.- Local area :...
, a traditional French cradle song, an Irish version of the fertility dance-tune "All Around My Hat"
All Around My Hat (song)
The song "All Around my Hat" is of nineteenth century English origin. In an early version, dating from the 1820s, a Cockney costermonger vowed to be true to his fiancee, who had been sentenced to seven years' transportation to Australia for theft and to mourn his loss by wearing green willow...
and a reference to the English folksong "Early One Morning
Early One Morning
"Early One Morning" is an English folk song. The lyrics are first found in publications as far back as 1787. A broadside in the Bodleian Library, Oxford dates from about 1803...
". The slow movement of the First Piano Sonata is based on the Scottish folk melody "Ca the Yowes to the Knowes", as is that of the Concerto for Double String Orchestra. Other works inspired by folksong include Four Songs from the British Isles for unaccompanied choir (1956) and The Shires Suite (1970).
A different kind of folksong inspired one of Tippett's most frequently-performed works. The five African-American spirituals
Spiritual (music)
Spirituals are religious songs which were created by enslaved African people in America.-Terminology and origin:...
which form the emotional core of the oratorio A Child of our Time
A Child of Our Time
A Child of Our Time is an oratorio written by Michael Tippett between 1939 and 1941."After more than ten years of thoughtful planning, Michael Tippett summed up his musical, political, spiritual and philosophical beliefs in his first oratorio, A Child of Our Time...
were chosen by the composer as a modern alternative to the traditional chorale
Chorale
A chorale was originally a hymn sung by a Christian congregation. In certain modern usage, this term may also include classical settings of such hymns and works of a similar character....
s in the Passions of Bach. Their contemporary relevance is reinforced by the emergence in the 1950s of the Civil Rights Movement
African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)
The African-American Civil Rights Movement refers to the movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring voting rights to them. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1955 and 1968, particularly in the South...
in the United States.
Melody plays an important role in all of the works Tippett wrote in the 1930s and 1940s. The slow movement of the First String Quartet opens with "an extended arch of lyric melody" (Ian Kemp), which was a direct response to the experience of falling in love: "all that love flowed out in the slow movement of my First String Quartet, an unbroken span of lyrical music in which all four instruments sing ardently from start to finish" was Tippett's own description. The music of the 1950s is fundamentally lyric in style, though there are comparatively few long-breathed melodies; two such can be found in the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli, and the Piano Concerto opens with a long tune for high piano and flute, creating "a sustained crescendo, thirty-three bars long leading to a sonorous tutti"(David Matthews). The fourth movement of the Second Symphony contains a passage consisting of a long arching line for unison violins (followed by 'cellos), accompanied by swirling woodwind, which the composer described as "a very long melody".
Over twenty years later Tippett returned to writing melody of deceptive simplicity in the slow movement of the Triple Concerto. His final work, The Rose Lake is subtitled 'A Song without Words for orchestra'.
Compositional method
From his earliest years as a composer Tippett wrote what he felt he had to write. The music emerged as the culmination of a long process of inner search and personal development. The most important example of this creative process is A Child of Our Time. His other two major choral works, The Vision of Saint Augustine (1965) and The Mask of Time (1982) had a similar genesis. In the later part of his life Tippett refused to allow commissions for concertos and other works tailor-made for specific artists to divert him from his creative goals. He seldom revised his earlier works.After this long period of gestation, he wrote slowly but steadily. "Noting Eliot's comment that, for himself as a poet, 'the words come last', Tippett only began writing down the notes when he had a clear concept of the structure and character of the piece in question. He invariably composed straight into full score: and he always started at the beginning of the piece, continuing until he reached the end – then he stopped. Taken overall, this kind of compositional procedure is fairly unusual" (Meirion Bowen).
The composer Andrew Ford
Andrew Ford
Andrew Ford is an English and Australian composer, writer and radio presenter.He was Composer-in-residence with the Australian Chamber Orchestra , held the Peggy Glanville-Hicks Composer Fellowship from 1998 to 2000 and was awarded a two-year fellowship by the Music Board of the Australia Council...
relates this revealing anecdote: "the first time I...met him, as a student composer..., he...[gave] me some very valuable advice. I had just completed a piece which was extremely complex and I was very proud of it, but then it was played and I had never heard anything so boring. For all my use of mathematical procedures, there was nothing of interest in the music. Tippett ... said, 'Just use your ears, love.'"
Criticism
For a long time Tippett had to face a recurrent charge: that his music was amateurish, over-complicated and even unplayable. In the words of Ian Kemp, "[a]lthough it was acknowledged to contain fine moments, it was criticized as the work of a dilettante, weakened by a profusion of extra-musical allusion. A critical commonplace was that Tippett was straining to say something he was technically ill-equipped to do". Some of these comments may have arisen as a result of inadequate rehearsal time and unfamiliarity with Tippett's rhythmic innovations. In addition, his reluctance to analyse his own music "encouraged the view that while his verbal literacy was formidable, his musical literacy was not" (Kemp).Writings
A frequent broadcaster on the BBC Third Programme from its inception in 1946, Tippett published some of his radio talks in 1958 as a book. He called it Moving into Aquarius. The title refers to the mythical belief in the dawning of a 'new ageNew Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
' under the astrological
Astrological age
An astrological age is a time period which astrology postulates parallels major changes in the development of Earth's inhabitants, particularly relating to culture, society and politics. There are twelve astrological ages corresponding to the twelve zodiacal signs in western astrology. At the...
sign of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
The Age of Aquarius is either the current or new age in the cycle of astrological ages. Each astrological age is approximately 2,150 years long, on average, but there are various methods of calculating this length that may yield longer or shorter time spans depending upon the technique used...
The twin themes are the artist as himself and the artist in relation to society.
I have been writing music for forty years. During those years there have been huge and world-shattering events in which I have been inevitably caught up. Whether society has felt music valuable or needful I have gone on writing because I must. And I know that my true function within a society which embraces all of us, is to continue a tradition, fundamental to our civilization, which goes back into pre-history and will go forward into the unknown future. This tradition is to create images from the depths of the imagination and to give them form whether visual, intellectual or musical. For it is only through images that the inner world communicates at all. Images of the past, shapes of the future. Images of vigour for a decadent period, images of calm for one too violent. Images of reconciliation for worlds torn by division. And in an age of mediocrity and shattered dreams, images of abounding, generous, exuberant beauty.
In 1991 his autobiography Those Twentieth Century Blues was published. Among other insights, this book contains a selection of Tippett's dreams. Peter Heyworth has made the observation that the dreams' "relevance to his creative life became increasingly evident. In particular, the series of works that were to establish his reputation during and after the war and to culminate in The Midsummer Marriage...hove into view. The therapy had worked..." A final collection of the composer's writings was published in 1995 under the title Tippett on Music.
External links
- Excerpts from audio interviews with Tippett from the BBC
- Michael Tippett's page at Schott Music Schott Music ltd.
- Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra website—contains articles and a few photographs of Tippett, who was their patron and conducted them regularly in the UK and Europe, as well as some interesting Tippett memorabilia
- Shires Suite—information and a short audio excerpts from various LSSO recordings
- Suite in D—information and short audio excerpts from the 1967 Pye recording
- Tippett's Midsummer Marriage—an exploration of the spiritual and psychological dimensions