Born in Eastcote in 1905, Michael Tippett received his education at the Royal College of Music and learned his first lessons in composition from Charles Wood. After graduating, he was offered to conduct a concert and operatic society in Surrey. In 1929 he formed a madrigal group and became a music teacher at a local school.
Michael Tippett reconnected with one of his teachers from RCM, XVIth century polyphony specialist R.O. Morris, whose training proved very fruitful as he learnt to emulate Bach’s style of writing figures. From 1940 to 1951 he was director of music at Morley College, putting on pioneering performances of Monteverdi and Purcell.
His talent developed slowly: he destroyed or withdrew every one of his earliest compositions, publishing his first works at 30 years old. His first opera, The Midsummer Marriage (1955) was not well received. After this, Michael Tippett wrote the libretti for all his operas, following the advice of his spiritual father, Nobel laureate T.S. Eliot.
Critics and amateurs alike often found his plots and texts obscure at first, only to enjoy the opera even more on hearing it again. Michael Tippett was always talking about archetypes, communicating a vision rather than a story. His polarizing compositions divided the listeners between those who loved him deeply and those who left the performances early.
His initial struggle to accept his homosexuality led him to Jungian psychoanalysis, whose effect on his composition was tangible: Michael Tippett’s music is defined by the Jungian dichotomy between light and shadow, and by the mysterious images that he drew from his well-kept dream-diary.
Most of Michael Tippett’s vocal works are connected through their elements of dream and vision, and their political and ethical idealism, thus forming a unique opera-in-progress. Moreover, most of his works have satellites, similar materials developed into different scores and domains.
Overwhelmed by injustice and oppression in the 1930s, Michael Tippett started to infuse his music with radicalized political opinions. He began his first magnus opus, the deeply atheistic oratorio A Child of Our Time in 1939, completed it in 1941 and it was first performed in 1944. Embracing Trotsky’s communism after meeting the Marxist composer Alan Bush, Michael Tippett joined the Communist Party in 1935, which he left when the Stalinist ideologies became too overpowering. He took up the pledge of reverend Dick Sheppard and joined the resulting peace pledge union, eventually becoming its president. In 1943, as a pacifist, he was sentenced to three months imprisonment for refusing to comply with conditions of exemption from active war service.
Michael Tippett’s music was broadly lyrical until the late 1950s, evolving into a more experimental style, increasingly influenced by blues and jazz after his first visit to the USA. While his popularity with the public kept on growing, some critics said that the quality of his work suffered from this change in style. In 1953 Michael Tippett wrote one of his most famous works, the orchestral Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli. In the late 1960s he became director of the Bath Festival and held pop concerts with Led Zeppelin. He was knighted in 1966. Ten years later, Michael Tippett’s music started to reflect the works of his youth and returned to lyricism. He set up a charitable trust in 1979, the Michael Tippett Musical Foundation, whose initial income came from selling most of his autographed manuscripts to the British Library. In 1983 he was awarded the Order of Merit.
He was a strong advocate of music education and remained very active conducting and composing as well as a radio broadcaster and writer on music. In 1995, Michael Tippett was honoured with special events in Britain, Canada and the USA on his 90th birthday. Although in his lifetime he was greatly praised, sometimes ranked with his contemporary Benjamin Britten as one of the leading British composers of the XXth century, the critical judgement on his legacy has been uneven. He died at the age of 93.
Composers like David Matthews, Edward Cowie, Mark-Anthony Turnage and William Mathias have claimed to have been influenced by Michael Tippett.
Michael Tippett reconnected with one of his teachers from RCM, XVIth century polyphony specialist R.O. Morris, whose training proved very fruitful as he learnt to emulate Bach’s style of writing figures. From 1940 to 1951 he was director of music at Morley College, putting on pioneering performances of Monteverdi and Purcell.
His talent developed slowly: he destroyed or withdrew every one of his earliest compositions, publishing his first works at 30 years old. His first opera, The Midsummer Marriage (1955) was not well received. After this, Michael Tippett wrote the libretti for all his operas, following the advice of his spiritual father, Nobel laureate T.S. Eliot.
Critics and amateurs alike often found his plots and texts obscure at first, only to enjoy the opera even more on hearing it again. Michael Tippett was always talking about archetypes, communicating a vision rather than a story. His polarizing compositions divided the listeners between those who loved him deeply and those who left the performances early.
His initial struggle to accept his homosexuality led him to Jungian psychoanalysis, whose effect on his composition was tangible: Michael Tippett’s music is defined by the Jungian dichotomy between light and shadow, and by the mysterious images that he drew from his well-kept dream-diary.
Most of Michael Tippett’s vocal works are connected through their elements of dream and vision, and their political and ethical idealism, thus forming a unique opera-in-progress. Moreover, most of his works have satellites, similar materials developed into different scores and domains.
Overwhelmed by injustice and oppression in the 1930s, Michael Tippett started to infuse his music with radicalized political opinions. He began his first magnus opus, the deeply atheistic oratorio A Child of Our Time in 1939, completed it in 1941 and it was first performed in 1944. Embracing Trotsky’s communism after meeting the Marxist composer Alan Bush, Michael Tippett joined the Communist Party in 1935, which he left when the Stalinist ideologies became too overpowering. He took up the pledge of reverend Dick Sheppard and joined the resulting peace pledge union, eventually becoming its president. In 1943, as a pacifist, he was sentenced to three months imprisonment for refusing to comply with conditions of exemption from active war service.
Michael Tippett’s music was broadly lyrical until the late 1950s, evolving into a more experimental style, increasingly influenced by blues and jazz after his first visit to the USA. While his popularity with the public kept on growing, some critics said that the quality of his work suffered from this change in style. In 1953 Michael Tippett wrote one of his most famous works, the orchestral Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli. In the late 1960s he became director of the Bath Festival and held pop concerts with Led Zeppelin. He was knighted in 1966. Ten years later, Michael Tippett’s music started to reflect the works of his youth and returned to lyricism. He set up a charitable trust in 1979, the Michael Tippett Musical Foundation, whose initial income came from selling most of his autographed manuscripts to the British Library. In 1983 he was awarded the Order of Merit.
He was a strong advocate of music education and remained very active conducting and composing as well as a radio broadcaster and writer on music. In 1995, Michael Tippett was honoured with special events in Britain, Canada and the USA on his 90th birthday. Although in his lifetime he was greatly praised, sometimes ranked with his contemporary Benjamin Britten as one of the leading British composers of the XXth century, the critical judgement on his legacy has been uneven. He died at the age of 93.
Composers like David Matthews, Edward Cowie, Mark-Anthony Turnage and William Mathias have claimed to have been influenced by Michael Tippett.