Michael Tippett

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Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE (born January 2, 1905 in London , † January 8, 1998 ibid) was an English composer of modern music.

Tippett wrote operas , orchestral and choral works, vocal and chamber music . His best known work is the oratorio A Child of Our Time . He was politically and socially engaged with a thorough and consistent pacifist attitude.

Life

Tippett was the son of attorney Henry William Tippett and writer Isabel Clementina Binny Kemp and grew up in Wetherden and until the age of 19 in Suffolk , as well as in the south of France, where his father ran a hotel belonging to his grandfather, a wealthy real estate agent. Even as a child Michael was pounding wildly on a piano and called it "composing", which nobody understood. In 1914 he went, like his one year older brother Peter, to the Brookfield Preparatory School in Swanage . In 1918 he received a scholarship to Fettes College , a boarding school in Edinburgh . There he sang in the choir, received piano and organ lessons, but the abuses and conditions were so unbearable that his parents, now living in France, de-registered him and sent him to the Stamford School in Lincolnshire . Here he took piano lessons from Frances Tinkler, who introduced him to the great composers such as Bach , Beethoven , Schubert and Chopin . But when Michael said he wanted to be a composer and not go to Cambridge University as his conservative parents wanted , the school turned it down. The teenager developed such rebellious behavior that the Stamford School asked him to leave in the summer of 1922. He stayed another year and achieved a rethinking of his parents.

It was not until 1923 that his father agreed to let him study music. Then from 1923 to 1928 Tippett studied violin and piano as well as composition with Charles Wood , then with CH Kitson , and learned conducting with Malcom Sargent and Adrian Boult at the Royal College of Music in London .

In 1924 he became music director of an amateur choir in Oxted near Surrey . After graduating with a Bachelor of Music degree , which he only managed to do the second time, he settled there to work with this choir and a theater company. He earned his living teaching French and music at Hazelwood School in Limpsfield. When he gave up this activity to devote himself entirely to composing, he financed his livelihood from his small private fortune and from income from occasional conducting engagements with local choral associations in the districts of Surrey. In 1930 he was able to perform all of the works he had composed in Oxted.

All compositions he wrote in the later 1920s and 1930s have been withdrawn; the same rigorous attitude led him to return to the Royal College in 1930 as a private student for an intensive period of study until 1932. With RO Morris , a specialist in music of the 16th century, he was able to acquire particularly knowledge of counterpoint . From 1933 he directed the then existing South London Orchestra at Morley College , an orchestra of free musicians, as well as various choirs. His first public concert took place here on March 5, 1933. His orchestra is part of the unemployment service, so he comes into close contact with the labor movement, with the choirs he performs political songs in the style of Hanns Eisler . It was during this period that he began his own political activities, which led him to join the Communist Party for a few months, and he met the poet TS Eliot , who encouraged him to write a text for his oratorio A Child of Our Time .

In the mid-1930s, the 1st string quartet and the 1st piano sonata were the first valid works of his early style, including the Concerto for Double String Orchestra , Tippett's first work, which was widely recognized and applauded, as was the 2nd string quartet . In this first test phase he was rooted in the polyrhythm of the English madrigal - based on the works of Purcell and Handel , Hindemith and Stravinsky , and above all Beethoven, whose works were part of his studies. These early works between the war years speak of his rejection of the English pastoral school in favor of a far more individual and eclectic idiom. The years before the Second World War gave impetus to his political convictions. The result was the oratorio A Child of Our Time , in which he identified himself with the “public world” and articulated his attitude. With the premiere of this work in 1944 he experienced his breakthrough as a composer.

In 1940 he was appointed music director of Morley College , where professionals could continue their education. The college employed refugees from all over Europe, including musicians like Walter Goehr , Mátyás Seiber and Walter Bergmann , a flute specialist. He held this office until 1951 with one interruption. 1943, during the Second World War, he was convicted in a trial to three months in prison, of which he spent two in prison Wormwood Scrubs was serving because he conscientious objectors was and because of its strict pacifist attitude an operation in the Royal Air Force Symphony Orchestra or community service under did not want to do the given conditions.

The 1st symphony , completed in 1945, was an expression of the composer's technical maturity, but with the 3rd string quartet it also turned out to be a departure from the previous style. The next six years were filled with new plans and compositions. In 1951 he gave up his position at Morley College to devote himself entirely to composing and moved to Tidebrook Manor in Wadhurst , Sussex . His departure from Morley, whose musical concept brought him national attention and the interest of the BBC , was at the same time the rise to an international career.

The first of two stylistic reorientations can be found in the composition of his first opera The Midsummer Marriage , which was completed in 1952 and premiered in January 1955 by Sir John Pritchard at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. The predominantly linear structure of the early works, with their emphasis on springy and additive rhythm and functional orchestral treatment, gave way to a style that placed great emphasis on lyrical impulses that embed flowing, ecstatic lines in filigree decorations and a shimmering orchestral palette. The opera was followed by several large-scale orchestral works, the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli , the Piano Concerto and the 2nd Symphony , which is reminiscent of Stravinsky’s sharply honed expression. With the opera King Priam , which was also premiered in May 1962 by Sir John Pritchard at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden with the choreography by John Cranko , a second stylistic reorientation came abruptly, which was marked from the extreme to thrift and conciseness. Thrift characterizes the orchestral interludes of The Vision of Saint Augustine (1966), as Tippett's most profound and demanding work, and is noticeable even in the libretto of his third opera The Knot Garden . It was premiered by Sir Colin Davis in December 1970 at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. The 3rd symphony develops a reference to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, while the fourth opera, The Ice Break (1977), condenses into a seamless collage, and the 3rd piano sonata reveals the exploration of abstract music.

In the three subsequent works - the 4th Symphony , the 4th String Quartet and the Triple Concerto for Violin, Viola and Cello - Tippett explores the one-movement form, but it is ultimately the choral work The Mask of Time (1984) that is the sum of its Reflects achievements as a composer. The work for guitar solo , inspired by Wallace Stevens ' poem The Blue Guitar (1983), which premiered in Hong Kong in 1984 with great success , should also be mentioned as a sign of the compositional perfection and the final style .

In all this time, Tippett has never given up his pacifist beliefs. Since 1940 he was a member and since 1959 President of the Peace Pledge Union . In general, he was of the opinion that political activity kept him from his real work, composing. Only once did he publicly make a clear political statement when he criticized President Carter's plans to develop a neutron bomb at an exhibition in St Martin-in-the-Fields in 1977 .

In 1960 he moved from Sussex to Corsham near Wiltshire in Wessex . There he lived with his partner, the artist Karl Hawker . From there he went on long journeys. In 1965 he traveled to the USA for the first time and was enthusiastic about the mood of the country, which was immediately reflected in his music. In 1969 he began working with Sir Colin Davis . His partnership broke up and he moved to Calne , Wiltshire.

From 1970 to 1974 he built up the previously financially desolate Bath International Music Festival as artistic director . In 1974 the Michael Tippett Festival at Tufts University near Boston was founded in his honor . He started writing about his music and gave a number of lectures.

In July 1977 his fourth opera, The Ice Break , premiered with Sir Colin Davis at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden under the direction of Sam Wanamaker, choreography by Walter Raines, set by Ralph Koltai, with a demanding cast. The singers included: Heather Harper (Nadia), Josephine Barstow (Gayle), Tom McDonnell (Yuri), John Shirley-Quirk (Lev), Roderick Kennedy (Lieutenant), the colored singers Beverly Vaughn (Hannah) and Clyde Walker (Olympion) ) and countertenor James Thomas Bowman (Astron). The symphony No.4 will be premiered in Chicago under Sir Georg Solti .

In 1979 Michael Tippett sold some of his original manuscripts to the British Library . In the same year he used the proceeds to set up the Michael Tippett Musical Foundation , which financially supports young musicians and musical education projects. Composers whose music was influenced by him include Mark-Anthony Turnage , David Matthews , William Mathias , Steve Martland, and Edward Cowie .

In 1983 he became President of the Royal College of Music in London and continued to travel despite health problems. Because of his macular degeneration , he increasingly relied on his assistants, Michael Tillett and Meirion Bowen, who became his constant companions. 1989–90 he toured Australia and Senegal . In 1997 he moved from Wiltshire to London to be close to his work and friends. Then he made one final trip to a music festival in Stockholm where his works were performed.

In 1986 the choreographer John Neumeier created the ballet Amleth for the opening of the renovated Royal Theater in Copenhagen in the presence of the Queen and her family as well as the composer based on a Nordic-archaic Viking saga (Two brothers: War with Norway, Gertrud and Hovendel's marriage, Frej and King Koll's funeral , Amleth's children, Fortinbras) with music by Michael Tippett (Divertimento, Sellingers Round, Triple Concert, 4th Symphony) in the set by Klaus Hellenstein .

After a heart attack and pneumonia, he died in London on January 8, 1998, six days after his 93rd birthday.

Tippett's own words sum up his life's work: “The dream is broken as it happens again and again. But shouldn't I sing anymore just because all higher striving is so fragile? I don't think it will come that way. We praise - sometimes in disused forms - because we have to. "

Awards

Works (selection)

Opera (all in three acts; the libretti are all from the composer):

  • 1955: The Midsummer Marriage
  • 1961: King Priam (German: König Priamos )
  • 1970: The Knot Garden (German: Der Mafgarten )
  • 1973-76: The Ice Break
  • 1986-88: New Year

Choir:

  • 1939-41: A Child of Our Time . Oratorio for soprano, alto, tenor, bass, choir and orchestra
  • 1953: Crown of the Year
  • 1960: Lullababy
  • 1965: The Vision of Saint Augustine for baritone, choir and orchestra
  • 1970: The Shires Suite
  • 1982/83: The Mask of Time for soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, choir and orchestra
  • Five Negro Spirituals , Dance, Clairon Air , Four Songs from the British Islands

Orchestra:

  • 1939: Concerto for two string orchestras
  • 1942: Fantasia on a theme by Handel for (2) piano and orchestra
  • 1944–78: 4 symphonies (1944–45; 1958; 1972, with soprano solo; 1978)
  • 1946: Little Music for string orchestra
  • 1948: Suite for the birthday of Prince Charles
  • 1953: Fantasia Concertante on a theme by Corelli for string orchestra
  • 1953: Ritual Dances from The Midsummer Marriage
  • 1954: Divertimento on Sellingers Round for chamber orchestra
  • 1956: piano concerto
  • 1962/63: Concerto for orchestra
  • 1978/79: Triple Concerto for violin, viola, cello and orchestra
  • 1989: New Year Suite for Orchestra
  • 1991-93: The Rose Lake . Symphonic poetry

Chamber music

  • 1934/35: 5 string quartets (revised 1943; 1941/42; 1945/46; 1977/78; 1990/91)
  • 1955: Sonata for four horns

Solo instruments:

  • 1936/37: 4 piano sonatas (revised 1942, 1954; 1962; 1972/73; 1984)
  • 1982/83: The Blue Guitar , sonata for guitar solo

Further works for brass music, piano, organ and vocal

right

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Fonts

  • Michael Tippett: Moving into Aquarius . Paladin Books, St Albans 1974, ISBN 0-586-08179-8 .
  • Michael Tippett with Meirion Bowen: Music of the Angels: essays and sketchbooks of Michael Tippett. Eulenberg Books, London 1980 ISBN 0-903-87360-5 .
  • Michael Tippett: Those Twentieth Century Blues . Hutchinson, London 1991, ISBN 0-09-175307-4 .
  • Michael Tippett: Thomas Schuttenhelm (Ed.): The selected letters of Michael Tippett . Faber and Faber, London 2005, ISBN 0-571-22600-0 .
  • Those Twentieth Century Blues (autobiography), Hutchinson, London 1991, ISBN 0-7126-6059-3 .
  • Meirion Bowen (Ed.): Tippett on Music. (Collected essays) Clarendon Press, Oxford 1995 ISBN 0-19-816541-2 (German: Essays zur Musik. Schott Musik International, Mainz 1998, ISBN 3-7957-0334-4 ).
  • T. Schuttenhelm: The selected letters of Michael Tippett. Faber and Faber, 2005.

literature

  • Meirion Bowen: Michael Tippett. Robson Books, London 1997, ISBN 1-86105-099-2 .
  • David Clarke: The music and thought of Michael Tippett. Modern times and metaphysics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2001, ISBN 0-521-58292-X .
  • Ian Kemp: Tippett. The composer and his music. Eulenberg, London 1984, ISBN 0-903873-23-0 .
  • Diether de la Motte : transforming, dreaming, juggling. Michael Tippett's "The Blue Guitar". In: nova giulianiad. Volume 11. 1988, pp. 113-125, ISSN  0254-9565 .
  • Suzanne Robinson (Ed.): Michael Tippett. Music and Literature. Ashgate, London 2002, ISBN 0-7546-0132-3 .
  • Meinhard Saremba: Michael Tippett . In: Ders .: Elgar, Britten & Co. A history of British music in 12 portraits. M - & - T-Verlag, Zurich 1994, ISBN 3-7265-6029-7 , pp. 319-350.
  • Meinhard Saremba: Dream (s) in a cruel world. Michael Tippet's operas. In: opera world . The international opera magazine. 2005, Issue 1, pp. 32-40, ISSN  0030-3690 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bath Festivals - Homepage at bathfestivals.org.uk (English)
  2. ^ Michael Tippett Musical Foundation , accessed September 17, 2013.
  3. ^ Honorary Members: Michael Tippett. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 24, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Tippett, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tippett, Michael Kemp (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English composer
DATE OF BIRTH January 2, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH January 8, 1998
Place of death London