The current and future reputation of Michael Tippett's music?

[Serial_Apologist]

It's an interesting question. There isn't a mass audience for indigenous contemporary music anymore, is there, but I wonder if there ever is an enthusiastic mass audience for the contemporary very often. There may be vociferous audiences for it, a number of critical notices and better or worse informed public commentary. But, in sum, that number at its peak might never constitute more than a few thousand.

A secondary question arises from your original one, I think, which is: What is the general musical audience? Is there one/1? An audience we might consider to be a single entity? If there is, who are they and what are their numbers?

Phew - that's a big question, Phil - and one which has been asked and responded to quite a number of times on this, and the previous BBC R3 forum.

As far as I was concerned there appeared to be a larger audience for modern music in the 1960s - including for avant-garde composers such as Boulez and Stockhausen - whose spirit reflected a belief that modernism represented an optimistic radical spirit of change. That's how many of us felt about it, at the time.

[hackneyvi]

Phew - that's a big question, Phil - and one which has been asked and responded to quite a number of times on this, and the previous BBC R3 forum.

As far as I was concerned there appeared to be a larger audience for modern music in the 1960s - including for avant-garde composers such as Boulez and Stockhausen - whose spirit reflected a belief that modernism represented an optimistic radical spirit of change. That's how many of us felt about it, at the time.

To what extent did popular music abosrb and sophisticate from the avant garde? If I look at, most obviously, The Beatles, time signature, rhythm, harmony, key (I believe), duration to an extent and supremely subject matter are all explored in their music. Frank Zappa is another whose music still clearly sings and dances whilst having sophisticated tones in its text and topics.

One of the great things I admire in Tippett is his determination to produce music which sang and danced and I think he frequently succeeded in his objective, sometimes failed. He wasn't just resisting doing what others were doing, he was striving to fulfill himself. His music combines what I take to be the supreme selfishness and generosity of perhaps all serious musicians which is that they struggle against the wholescale indifference, even hostility of the world, and their own doubts, to be and show their self. When I think about it seriously - which I do for the first time in this moment - the self-exposure must take enormous, perpetually-dashed and perpetually-recovered courage.

I'd be glad to receive any suggestions about alternative musics from the 1940s to the 1980s that I might try coming to know the other composers of Tippett's chief creative time beyond Britten and Vaughan Williams. Whilst I know some names, I know very little of their music.

[rauschwerk]

I'd be glad to receive any suggestions about alternative musics from the 1940s to the 1980s that I might try coming to know the other composers of Tippett's chief creative time beyond Britten and Vaughan Williams. Whilst I know some names, I know very little of their music.

Do explore the music of Roberto Gerhard! A pupil of Schoenberg, he started out as a kind of Spanish Bartok. His violin concerto is a fine example of his work from this phase. With his piano concerto (try the excellent Naxos recording by Peter Donohoe) he adopted serial technique. A sudden increase of interest in his work in the 1960s led to a creative Indian summer. His later music is serial and often athematic (first symphony) but it dances in a way that the music of his teacher hardly ever does.

[Chris Newman]

Oh, rauschwerk, thank you for bringing up Gerhard. Another neglected genius....and, of course, Schoenberg himself. Naxos records are doing him proud.

[hackneyvi]

Do explore the music of Roberto Gerhard! A pupil of Schoenberg, he started out as a kind of Spanish Bartok. His violin concerto is a fine example of his work from this phase. With his piano concerto (try the excellent Naxos recording by Peter Donohoe) he adopted serial technique. A sudden increase of interest in his work in the 1960s led to a creative Indian summer. His later music is serial and often athematic (first symphony) but it dances in a way that the music of his teacher hardly ever does.

Thanks, rauschwerk. I think I need to make a serious effort to get to know my way around post-war music and will add Gerhard as a reference point. I'm intrigued to hear that he's a 'serial dancer'. I'm beginning to develop some kind of ability to appreciate modern and contemporary music as I hear it - become attuned to some degree - and there isn't really any music now which intimidates me so I'll take my courage with pleasure to the violin concerto.

[Mandryka]

I know very little of Tippett's music (barring CoOT, which I'm not keen on) but it's been fascinating to read this thread.

This is actually the only place where I've heard any enthusiasm for MT - everyone I know is violently negative about him (one friend told me he could 'just about stand' The Midsummer Marriage, but that he found the rest of Tippett 'unendurable'). Another claimed she had been 'put off opera for life' by being taken to see King Priam as part of a school party (whatever you might think of that work, it's hardly the ideal introduction to opera, is it?).

I've also heard the view that Tippett's music became unfashionable with the increasing individualisation of society and the rejection of the (left wing) ideas with which he was associated. I don't know how seriously to take this view...

I suppose the thing to do is to check out some of his less well-known works....Any suggestions?

[Chris Newman]

I can only speak from personal experience:

I came to Tippett's music through the Concerto for Double string Orchestra which I think most people find very listenable.

Works I would regard as relatively easy to listen to:

Birthday Suite for Prince Charles
A Child of Our Time
Concerto for Double String Orchestra
Diverimento on Sellinger's Round
Fantasia Concertante on a theme of Corelli
The Midsummer Marriage
Piano Concerto
Praeludium for Brass, Bells & Percussion
Ritual Dances
The Rose Lake
Triple Concerto

Then most people find the following works a bit more challenging. Those like me find them more than worth the challenge:

The Four Symphonies
The Knot Garden (opera)
The Piano Sonatas
The String Quartets
The vocal works like "Clarion Air", "Plebs Angelica" and "Weeping Babe", "Songs for Ariel" and "Songs for Dov"


Then there are works which require you to be a Tippett affectionado:

Byzantium
Concerto for Orchestra
The Ice Break (opera)
King Priam (opera)
New Year (opera)
The Vision of Saint Augustine

To give an example of how difficult these can be. I was already fond of the first two symphonies and the popular works in the first list when I went to The Vision Of St Augustine with Tippett conducting. I was impressed by the accuracy of the LSO and Chorus but baffled completely by the music. However the first half consisted of Elgar's Introduction and Allegro and Cello Concerto with Maurice Gendron and Tippett conducting. I was a teenager who had already heard du Pre play the latter twice. Gendron and Tippett gave two of the greatest Elgar performances I have witnessed. The concert was repeated a few days later so I went again for the Elgar and sat out the Vision and it worked. I am glad I did as I began to listen to other difficult music. I even bought the studio recording that resulted from the performances of the Vision

[hackneyvi]

I pretty much agree with Chris but, purely personally, I wouldn't recommend either the Divertimento on Sellinger's Round or A Child of Our Time.

Sellinger is a bit of a ramble to my ears. CoOT I find too fragmented and even, at times, cliched to be rewarding; he writes this fragmentary type of music in later styles and I like it much better. The spirituals and the final wordless chorale are lovely, though.

I think I'd go for:

Concerto for double string orchestra
Ritual dances from "A Midsummer Marriage"
Second string quartet
First piano sonata

Also, Boyhood's End. This is one of my very favourite pieces of his and of music; a 12 minute cantata with a prose text from W H Hudson autobiography; there's a Britten/Pears recording of it which I find that I am moved even to think of!

To me, those 5 pieces are full of very open-hearted but intelligent song and dance. They were amongst my starting points and made clear to me that Tippett was a very able composer of vigorous and moving music.

If you find the case is made (or fails!), I'd try the more modern but still distinctly Tippett-ian:

Second piano sonata (10" of clamouring fragmentary pianism; not really, but a bit more Boulez)
Third symphony
Fourth string quartet - another of my favourites (I love all of his string quartets but the third quartet perhaps the least)
The Songs for Ariel - tiny gems

His later music retains clear tones of joyfulness but overall tends to become, if not more 'serious', at least, more ambiguous but always somehow hopeful.

[hackneyvi]

Tippett did write some tiny music to bracket readings of Yates, I think. Has anyone ever heard this?

Or Meirion Bowen's orchestration of the fourth quartet, Water out of Sunlight. I would dearly love to hear that!