Family background The Tippett family originated in
Cornwall. Michael Tippett's grandfather, George Tippett, left the county in 1854 to make his fortune in London through property speculation and other business schemes. A flamboyant character, he had a strong tenor voice that was a popular feature at Christian revivalist meetings. In later life his business enterprises faltered, leading to debts, prosecution for fraud, and a term of imprisonment. His son Henry, born in 1858, was Michael's father. A lawyer by training, he was successful in business and was independently wealthy by the time of his marriage in April 1903. Unusually for his background and upbringing, Henry Tippett was a progressive liberal and a religious sceptic. Henry Tippett's bride was
Isabel Kemp, from a large
upper-middle-class family based in
Kent. Among her mother's cousins was
Charlotte Despard, a well-known campaigner for women's rights,
suffragism, and
Irish home rule. Despard was a powerful influence on the young Isabel, who was herself briefly imprisoned after participating in an illegal suffragette protest in
Trafalgar Square. Though neither she nor Henry was musical, she had inherited an artistic talent from her mother, who had exhibited at the
Royal Academy. After their marriage the couple settled outside London in
Eastcote. They had two sons.
Childhood and schooling Shortly after Michael's birth, the family moved to
Wetherden in Suffolk. Michael's education began in 1909 with a nursery governess and various private tutors who followed a curriculum that included piano lessons—his first formal contact with music. There was a piano in the house, on which he "took to improvising crazily ... which I called 'composing', though I had only the vaguest notion of what that meant". In September 1914 Michael became a boarder at Brookfield Preparatory School in
Swanage, Dorset. He spent four years there, at one point earning notoriety by writing an essay that challenged the existence of God. In 1918 he won a scholarship to
Fettes College, a boarding school in Edinburgh, where he studied the piano, sang in the choir, and began to learn to play the pipe organ. The school was not a happy place; sadistic bullying of the younger pupils was commonplace. When Michael revealed to his parents in March 1920 that he had formed a homosexual relationship with another boy, they removed him to
Stamford School in Lincolnshire, where a decade previously
Malcolm Sargent had been a pupil. Around this time Henry Tippett decided to live in France, and the house in Wetherden was sold. The 15-year-old Michael and his brother Peter remained at school in England, travelling to France for their holidays. Michael found Stamford much more congenial than Fettes, and developed both academically and musically. He found an inspiring piano teacher in Frances Tinkler, who introduced him to the music of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, and Chopin. Despite his parents' wish that he follow an orthodox path by proceeding to
Cambridge University, Tippett had firmly decided on a career as a composer, a prospect that alarmed them and was discouraged by his headmaster and by Sargent. By mid-1922 Tippett had developed a rebellious streak. His overt atheism particularly troubled the school, and he was required to leave. He remained in Stamford in private lodgings, while continuing lessons with Tinkler and with the organist of
St Mary's Church. In 1923 Henry Tippett was persuaded that some form of musical career, perhaps as a concert pianist, was possible, and agreed to support his son in a course of study at the
Royal College of Music (RCM). After an interview with the college principal,
Sir Hugh Allen, Tippett was accepted despite his lack of formal entry qualifications.
Royal College of Music , where Tippett studied between 1923 and 1928 Tippett began at the RCM in the summer term of 1923, when he was 18 years old. At the time, his biographer
Meirion Bowen records, "his aspirations were Olympian, though his knowledge rudimentary". Life in London widened his musical awareness, especially
the Proms at the
Queen's Hall, opera at
Covent Garden (where he saw
Dame Nellie Melba's farewell performance in
La bohème) and the
Diaghilev Ballet. He heard
Chaliapin sing, and attended concerts conducted by, among others,
Stravinsky and
Ravel—the last-named "a tiny man who stood bolt upright and conducted with what to me looked like a pencil". Tippett overcame his initial ignorance of early music by attending
Palestrina masses at
Westminster Cathedral, following the music with the help of a borrowed score. Tippett studied conducting with Sargent and
Adrian Boult, finding the latter a particularly empathetic mentor—he let Tippett stand with him on the rostrum during rehearsals and follow the music from the conductor's score. and learned much about the sounds of orchestral instruments. In 1924 Tippett became the conductor of an amateur choir in the Surrey village of
Oxted. Although he saw this initially as a means of advancing his knowledge of English
madrigals, his association with the choir lasted many years. Under his direction it combined with a local theatrical group, the Oxted and Limpsfield Players, to give performances of
Vaughan Williams's opera
The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains and of Tippett's own adaptation of an 18th-century ballad opera,
The Village Opera. He passed his
Bachelor of Music (BMus) exams, at his second attempt, in December 1928. Rather than continuing to study for a doctorate, Tippett decided to leave the academic environment. In February 1930 Tippett provided the incidental music for a performance by his theatrical group of
James Elroy Flecker's
Don Juan, and in October he directed them in his own adaptation of Stanford's opera
The Travelling Companion. His compositional output was such that on 5 April 1930 he gave a concert in Oxted consisting entirely of his own works—a Concerto in D for flutes, oboe, horns and strings; settings for tenor of poems by Charlotte Mew;
Psalm in C for chorus and orchestra, with a text by Christopher Fry; piano variations on the song "Jockey to the Fair"; and a string quartet. Professional soloists and orchestral players were engaged, and the concert was conducted by
David Moule-Evans, a friend from the RCM. Despite encouraging comments from
The Times and the
Daily Telegraph, Tippett was deeply dissatisfied with the works, and decided that he needed further tuition. He withdrew the music, and in September 1930 re-enrolled at the RCM for a special course of study in
counterpoint with
R. O. Morris, an expert on 16th-century music. This second RCM period, during which he learned to write
fugues in the style of Bach and received additional tuition in orchestration from
Gordon Jacob, His friendships with Ayerst and Allinson had opened up new cultural and political vistas. Through Ayerst he met
W. H. Auden, who in due course introduced him to
T. S. Eliot. Although no deep friendship developed with either poet, Tippett came to consider Eliot his "spiritual father". Ayerst also introduced him to a young artist,
Wilfred Franks. By this time Tippett was coming to terms with his homosexuality, while not always at ease with it. Franks provided him with what he called "the deepest, most shattering experience of falling in love". This intense relationship ran alongside a political awakening. Tippett's natural sympathies had always been leftish, and became more consciously so from his inclusion in Allinson's circle of left-wing activists. As a result, he gave up his teaching position at Hazelwood to become the conductor of the South London Orchestra, a project financed by the
London County Council and made up of unemployed musicians. Its first public concert was held on 5 March 1933 at
Morley College, later to become Tippett's professional base. In the summers of 1932 and 1934 Tippett took charge of musical activities at miners' work camps near
Boosbeck in the north of England. Known as the
Cleveland Work Camps, they were run by a munificent local landowner, Major Pennyman, to give unemployed miners a sense of purpose and independence. In 1932 Tippett arranged the staging of a shortened version of John Gay's ''
The Beggar's Opera, with locals playing the main parts, and the following year he provided the music for a new folk opera, Robin Hood'', with words by Ayerst, himself and
Ruth Pennyman. Both works proved hugely popular with their audiences, In October 1934 Tippett and the South London Orchestra performed at a centenary celebration of the
Tolpuddle Martyrs, as part of a grand Pageant of Labour at
the Crystal Palace. Tippett was not formally a member of any political party or group until 1935, when he joined the
British Communist Party at the urging of his cousin, Phyllis Kemp. This membership was brief; the influence of
Trotsky's
History of the Russian Revolution had led him to embrace
Trotskyism, while the party maintained a strict
Stalinist line. Tippett resigned after a few months when he saw no chance of converting his local party to his Trotskyist views. Although Tippett's radical instincts always remained strong, he was aware that excessive political activism would distract him from his overriding objective of becoming recognised as a composer. is the first in the recognised canon of Tippett's music.
Towards maturity Personal crisis Before the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Tippett released two further works: the Piano Sonata No. 1, first performed by
Phyllis Sellick at the Queen Mary Hall, London, on 11 November 1938, and the
Concerto for Double String Orchestra, which was not performed until 1940. This brought him to terms with his homosexuality, and he was able to pursue his creativity without being distracted by personal relationships.
A Child of Our Time While his therapy proceeded, Tippett was searching for a theme for a major work—an opera or an
oratorio—that could reflect both the contemporary turmoil in the world and his own recent catharsis. Having briefly considered the theme of the Dublin
Easter Rising of 1916, he based his work on a more immediate event: the murder in Paris of a German diplomat by a 17-year-old Jewish refugee,
Herschel Grynszpan. This murder triggered
Kristallnacht (Crystal Night), a coordinated attack on Jews and their property throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. Tippett called the oratorio
A Child of Our Time, taking the title from
Ein Kind unserer Zeit, a contemporary protest novel by the Austro-Hungarian writer
Ödön von Horváth. Within a three-part structure based on Handel's
Messiah, Tippett took the novel step of using North American
spirituals in place of the traditional
chorales that punctuate oratorio texts. According to Kenneth Gloag's commentary, the spirituals provide "moments of focus and repose ... giving shape to both the musical and literary dimensions of the work". Tippett began composing the oratorio in September 1939, on the conclusion of his dream therapy and immediately after the outbreak of war. Tippett's challenge was to rebuild the musical life of the college, using temporary premises and whatever resources he could muster. He revived the
Morley College Choir and orchestra, and arranged innovative concert programmes that typically mixed early music (
Orlando Gibbons,
Monteverdi,
Dowland), with contemporary works by Stravinsky,
Hindemith and
Bartók. : Tippett continued the Morley College tradition of promoting Purcell's music He continued the college's established association with the music of
Purcell; a performance in November 1941 of Purcell's
Ode to St Cecilia, with improvised instruments and rearrangements of voice parts, attracted considerable attention. The music staff at Morley was augmented by the recruitment of refugee musicians from Europe, including
Walter Bergmann,
Mátyás Seiber, and
Walter Goehr, who took charge of the college orchestra.
A Child of Our Time was finished in 1941 and put aside with no immediate prospects of performance. Tippett's
Fantasia on a Theme of Handel for piano and orchestra was performed at the
Wigmore Hall in March 1942, with Sellick again the soloist, and the same venue saw the première of the composer's String Quartet No. 2 a year later. In 1942,
Schott Music began to publish Tippett's works, establishing an association that continued until the end of the composer's life.
Recognition and controversy On his release, Tippett returned to his duties at Morley, where he boosted the college's Purcell tradition by persuading the
countertenor Alfred Deller to sing several Purcell odes at a concert on 21 October 1944—the first modern use of a countertenor in Purcell's music. Pears sang the tenor solo part, and other soloists were borrowed from
Sadler's Wells Opera. The work was well received by critics and the public, and eventually became one of the most frequently performed large-scale choral works of the post-Second World War period, in Britain and overseas. Tippett's immediate reward was a commission from the BBC for a
motet,
The Weeping Babe, which became his first broadcast work when it was aired on 24 December 1944. He also began to give regular radio talks on music. In 1946 Tippett organised at Morley the first British performance of Monteverdi's
Vespers, adding his own organ
Preludio for the occasion. Tippett's compositions in the immediate postwar years included his
First Symphony, performed under Sargent in November 1945, and the String Quartet No. 3, premiered in October 1946 by the
Zorian Quartet. The musical and philosophical ideas behind the opera had begun in Tippett's mind several years earlier. The story, which he wrote himself, charts the fortunes of two contrasting couples in a manner which has brought comparison with Mozart's
The Magic Flute. The strain of composition, combined with his continuing responsibilities at Morley and his BBC work, affected Tippett's health and slowed progress. Following the death in 1949 of Morley's principal,
Eva Hubback, Tippett's personal commitment to the college waned. His now-regular BBC fees had made him less dependent on his Morley salary, and he resigned his college post in 1951. His farewell took the form of three concerts he conducted at the new
Royal Festival Hall, in which the programmes included
A Child of Our Time, the British première of Carl Orff's
Carmina Burana, and
Thomas Tallis's rarely performed 40-part motet
Spem in alium. In 1951 Tippett moved from Limpsfield to a large, dilapidated house, Tidebrook Manor in
Wadhurst, Sussex. According to Bowen, most "were simply unprepared for a work that departed so far from the methods of Puccini and Verdi". Tippett's libretto was variously described as "one of the worst in the 350-year history of opera" A year after the première, the critic A.E.F. Dickinson concluded that "in spite of notable gaps in continuity and distracting infelicities of language, [there is] strong evidence that the composer has found the right music for his ends". Such comments helped foster a view that Tippett was a "difficult" composer, or even that his music was amateurish and poorly prepared. When the
Second Symphony was premièred by the
BBC Symphony Orchestra under Boult, in a live broadcast from the Royal Festival Hall on 5 February 1958, the work broke down after a few minutes and had to be restarted by the apologetic conductor: "Entirely my mistake, ladies and gentlemen".
International acclaim King Priam and after In 1960 Tippett moved to a house in the
Wiltshire village of
Corsham, where he lived with his long-term partner Karl Hawker. By then Tippett had begun work on his second major opera,
King Priam. He chose for his theme the tragedy of
Priam, mythological king of the
Trojans, as recorded in
Homer's
Iliad, and again he prepared his own libretto. As with
The Midsummer Marriage, Tippett's preoccupation with the opera meant that his compositional output was limited for several years to a few minor works, including a
Magnificat and
Nunc Dimittis written in 1961 for the 450th anniversary of the foundation of
St John's College, Cambridge.
King Priam was premièred in
Coventry by the
Covent Garden Opera on 29 May 1962 as part of a festival celebrating the consecration of the new
Coventry Cathedral. The production was by
Sam Wanamaker and the lighting by
Sean Kenny.
John Pritchard was the conductor. The music for the new work displayed a marked stylistic departure from what Tippett had written hitherto, heralding what a later commentator, Iain Stannard, calls a "great divide" between the works before and after
King Priam. Some commentators questioned the wisdom of so radical a departure from his established voice, but the opera was a considerable success with critics and the public. Lewis later called it "one of the most powerful operatic experiences in the modern theatre". This reception, combined with the fresh acclaim for
The Midsummer Marriage following a well-received BBC broadcast in 1963, did much to rescue Tippett's reputation and establish him as a leading figure among British composers. As with
The Midsummer Marriage, the compositions that followed
King Priam retained the musical idiom of the opera, notably the Piano Sonata No. 2 (1962) and the Concerto for Orchestra (1963), the latter written for the
Edinburgh Festival and dedicated to Britten for his 50th birthday. Tippett's main work in the mid-1960s was the
cantata The Vision of Saint Augustine, commissioned by the BBC, which Bowen marks as a peak of Tippett's compositional career: "Not since
The Midsummer Marriage had he unleashed such a torrent of musical invention". His status as a national figure was now being increasingly recognised. He had been appointed a
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1959; in 1961 he was made an honorary
Fellow of the Royal College of Music (HonFRCM), and in 1964 he received from Cambridge University the first of many
honorary doctorates. In 1966 he was
knighted.
Wider horizons In 1965 Tippett made the first of several visits to the United States, to serve as composer in residence at the
Aspen Music Festival in Colorado. His American experiences had a significant effect on the music he composed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with jazz and blues elements particularly evident in his third opera,
The Knot Garden (1966–69), and in the Symphony No. 3 (1970–72). At home in 1969, Tippett worked with the conductor
Colin Davis to rescue the
Bath International Music Festival from a financial crisis, and became the festival's artistic director for the next five seasons. In 1970, following the collapse of his relationship with Hawker, he left Corsham and moved to a secluded house on the
Marlborough Downs. In February 1974 Tippett attended a "Michael Tippett Festival" arranged in his honour by
Tufts University, near
Boston, Massachusetts. He was also present at a performance of
The Knot Garden at
Northwestern University at
Evanston, Illinois—the first Tippett opera to be performed in the US. Two years later he was again in the country, engaged on a lecture tour that included the Doty Lectures in Fine Art at the
University of Texas. In 1976 Tippett was awarded the Gold Medal of the
Royal Philharmonic Society. In 1979, with funds available from the sale of some of his original manuscripts to the
British Library, Tippett inaugurated the Michael Tippett Musical Foundation, which provided financial support to young musicians and music education initiatives. Tippett maintained his pacifist beliefs, while becoming generally less public in expressing them, and from 1959 served as president of the Peace Pledge Union. In 1977 he made a rare political statement when, opening a PPU exhibition at
St Martin-in-the-Fields, he attacked
President Carter's plans to develop a
neutron bomb.
Later life In his seventies, Tippett continued to compose and travel, although now handicapped by health problems. His eyesight was deteriorating as a result of
macular dystrophy, and he relied increasingly on his musical amanuensis Michael Tillett, and on Meirion Bowen, who became Tippett's assistant and closest companion in the remaining years of the composer's life. and the opera has not found a place in the general repertory. Mellers finds that its fusion of "art music, rock ritual and performance art fail to gel". The Triple Concerto includes a finale inspired by the gamelan music Tippett absorbed during his visit to Java. In 1979 Tippett was made a
Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH). The oratorio was commissioned by the
Boston Symphony Orchestra for its centenary, and was one of several of Tippett's late compositions that were premièred in America. In 1983 Tippett became president of the
London College of Music and was appointed a Member of the
Order of Merit (OM). The opera was introduced to Britain in the
Glyndebourne Festival of 1990. Despite his deteriorating health, Tippett toured Australia in 1989–90, and also visited
Senegal. His last major works, written between 1988 and 1993, were
Byzantium, for soprano and orchestra; the String Quartet No. 5; and
The Rose Lake, a "song without words for orchestra" inspired by a visit to
Lake Retba in Senegal during his 1990 trip. He intended
The Rose Lake to be his farewell, but in 1996 he broke his retirement to write "Caliban's Song" as a contribution to the Purcell tercentenary. He was cremated on 15 January, at
Hanworth crematorium, after a secular service. ==Music==