Michael Tippett question

[Stanfordian]

I seem to remember that Michael Tippett used break-dancing in one of his operas? If so which one was it? The Ice Break maybe?

[mercia]

New Year ??

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

New Year ??

I think this is it: the only one of Tippett's operas to have been written during the height of the Break-Dancing fashion (1989): The Ice Break was 1977.

[Thomas Roth]

It is New Year. There is some rap as well.

[Suffolkcoastal]

I'm a great admirer of Tippett, but New Year is not a work that I took to. I remember its first broadcast on TV and had to turn it off after about an hour or so. The Midsummer Marriage and King Priam though are masterpieces. I need to try The Knot Garden again but have never heard The Ice Break.

[ahinton]

I'm a great admirer of Tippett, but New Year is not a work that I took to. I remember its first broadcast on TV and had to turn it off after about an hour or so. The Midsummer Marriage and King Priam though are masterpieces. I need to try The Knot Garden again but have never heard The Ice Break.

You've not missed much if you've not heard the Ice Crack; it seems to me that Tippett's operas start out at the top of the composer's game and descend stepwise thereafter. New Year seems to be to be a particularly egregious example of the kind of faux-trendiness that afflicts large swathes of a particulr symphonic work that he wrote between his magnificent second symphony and his very different but still fascinating fourth and to which he sadly gave a number...

[Serial_Apologist]

I remember its first broadcast on TV and had to turn it off after about an hour or so. The Midsummer Marriage and King Priam though are masterpieces.

I just managed to see it through.

[Chris Newman]

I love the music of Michael Tippett, but The Ice Break and New Year were rather odd; too much of an old man trying to be young/mutton dressed up as lamb. Fortunately just afterwards he wrote some very lovely pieces before he died to remind us that at heart he was one of England's most lyrical voices.

[Roehre]

New Year seems to be to be a particularly egregious example of the kind of faux-trendiness that afflicts large swathes of a particulr symphonic work that he wrote between his magnificent second symphony and his very different but still fascinating fourth and to which he sadly gave a number...

Thank goodness, I am not the only one who is puzzled (and negatively on top of that) after listening to that work

[Ferretfancy]

I remember smiling way back when a rather po faced announcer introduced Robert Tear singing Songs for Dov, in which, he said " The composer uses boogie woogie rhythms! "

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I remember New Year with great affection. I took part in a series of education workshops held by Glyndebourne prior to the first (and, so far, only) performances of the opera, during which I attended rehearsals of the piece, saw the score and attended the second performance (along with about fifty schoolchildren who all seemed to enjoy the experience). I was so impressed that I bought a ticket for another performance. I also watched the BBC broadcast of the opera, which I had on video for some years before the machine chewed it up. So, forgive me, but I think I can talk with a little more insight than those who "had to turn it off after an hour or so" when I say that I consider it to be the most underated opera in the Tippett canon. I would also humbly suggest that, after The Midsummer Marriage, it is his best work for theatre: indeed, the puzzlement recorded in comments here seem curiously similar to that which was held about MM in, say, the early 'sixties, before Colin Davis' magnificent restoration of the work. It occurs to me that what New Year requires before it is so hastily written off is a restaging - in my dreams, I imagine the Ensemble Modern giving it the gritty precision the Music requires (the one reservation I had of the Glyndebourne performances was the self-conscious nervousness of some of the orchestral playing).

There is glorious Music in New Year: the "love scene" alone, full of the language that Tippett subsequently used in The Rose Lake, is the composer at his finest and the fire of the "Street Music" demonstrates real understanding both of the danger of the outside world that Jo fears and the excitement that the gangs she cowers from unneccesarily feel as "owners" of the streets. Everything moves towards Jo's final acceptance of the world outside her flat (her acceptance of Life and rejection of fear) and the outside world accepting her. Again, Tippett has provided a metaphor of inclusion, an expression in Music of a positive belief in Humanity that embraces multiple cultural aspects of that Humanity (?/those Humanities?) from William Blake to Coronation Street, the Odyssey to Star Trek, Beethoven to MC Hammer.

"Mutton dressed as lamb", Chris? Or an old man learning from the inexperience of the young? "A particularly egregious example of ... faux trendiness", ahinton? Sounds to me that you're talkilng less about Tippett's Music than indulgiing your inner Mr Pee (albeit with more impressive vocabulary)!

Most composers are like carpenters: they have a fixed set of materials that they regularly craft into magnificent artefacts. Tippett is one of those Artists (like Ives) who gather all sorts of disperate materials like magpies, and then bend, break, blow and make these materials their own. The results may often seem puzzling, but they repay close and repeated attention and, I submit, demand our respect.

Best Wishes.

[ahinton]

"A particularly egregious example of ... faux trendiness", ahinton? Sounds to me that you're talkilng less about Tippett's Music than indulgiing your inner Mr Pee (albeit with more impressive vocabulary)!

To the best of my (perhaps limited) knowledge, it's difficult if not impossible to indulge something that you don't have in the first place!

Most composers are like carpenters: they have a fixed set of materials that they regularly craft into magnificent artefacts.

Would that make the sons of J S Bach "chips off the old block", then?

Tippett is one of those Artists (like Ives) who gather all sorts of disperate materials like magpies, and then bend, break, blow and make these materials their own. The results may often seem puzzling, but they repay close and repeated attention and, I submit, demand our respect.

Nothing wrong with that, but Ives and Tippett each knew how to do it the other way, given the disciplines that they acquired in their early days and, in any case, it's what you do with those disparate materials that matters; Tippett rarely got this wrong, I think, although in the Third Symphony, The Ice Break and New Year he seemed rather to sail off course and, even in A Mask of Time, it seemed to lead him into a dilution of his expressive powers to the extent that one really has to wait some time for the fabulously wonderful bits! I'm no slouch in terms of my respect for Tippett, incidentally.

[Chris Newman]

By way of happy diversion here are Tippett and Ives "together":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXheg8C7Db4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbBYZzaSgnU

I agree that the Second Symphony is Tippett's finest but love very much the Fourth (perhaps the heavy breathing/wind machine was a miscalculation) and think it is very beautiful. The Third I find an interesting experiment but think that perhaps Symphony was the wrong title (then I think that is true of Das Lied von der Erde).

[Thomas Roth]

Tippett himself had second thoughts about the breathing in the fourth symphony. He said it sounded like something from a brothel.
New Year has some gorgeous music.

[amateur51]

By way of happy diversion here are Tippett and Ives "together":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXheg8C7Db4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbBYZzaSgnU

Who else but Tippett would add emphasis to his downbeat with "Go!"?

Love it