Michael Tippett (1905-1998) was one of our leading composers. Less noted in the obituaries in the national press was his lifelong commitment to peace. He was born into a middle-class, non-establishment family. His mother was a Labour Party member imprisoned for suffragette activities. At the age of nine, he demonstrated his independent thinking by writing an essay on the impossibility of the existence of God. He suffered the ordeal of attending the same boarding school as Tony Blair. At another, happier, school he opted out of religious education and the cadet corps.
After graduating from the Royal College of Music, Tippett took up composition as a career. He supplemented his meagre income with teaching and conducting. In these early days his radicalism was by no means consistent: in the 1926 General Strike, he substituted for striking extras in a performance at Covent Garden.
Tippett began linking his music with politics when visiting the north of England during the Great Depression. He wrote that he saw “for the first time, with horrified eyes, the undernourished children. When I returned to the well-fed south, I was ashamed.” He gave up schoolteaching and started conducting amateur choirs. His friendship with the marxist composer Alan Bush led to work with the London Labour Choral Union. The Choir performed for the poor in London’s East End — Tippett arranged for them to feed the audience. He joined the executive committee of the Workers’ Music Association.
Tippett became interested in Trotskyism but joined the Communist Party in 1935. He was involved with those trying to end its allegiance to Moscow but left in disillusion after they failed. Exposure to the theory of “social credit” led to his writing the play War Ramp, performed at Labour Party rallies. It argued that wars are built on a “ramp” of credit, financed ultimately by ordinary people. Drawn to pacifism, Tippett was among 100,000 people who responded to an open letter in the press to renounce war. From this he became an active member of the Peace Pledge Union and eventually its president.
When war broke out, Tippett applied for registration as a conscientious objector. He argued “my first political act was to attend an International Congress of Youth....to discuss methods of raising money to send child victims of the Great War to sanatoria in the Swiss mountains. I was 17 years old. It is not now possible for me to be at war...with those same children.” Tippett refused to comply with conditions set by the tribunal and was jailed for three months.
The approach of war and personal problems, including the suicide of someone close and conflict with relatives and friends about his sexuality, produced an acute psychological crisis for Tippett. He coped with this partly by turning to Jungian analysis and composed his first great work. He had contemplated an opera about the Easter Uprising but the events of Kristalnacht turned his thoughts elsewhere. He wrote the oratorio A Child of Our Time. This heartfelt plea on behalf of outcasts and scapegoats established him as a major composer. From now on, he expressed his views and humanitarianism through his work, particularly his operas.
Tippett’s music is not always easily accessible. His second symphony broke down in mid-performance at its premiere, his piano concerto was deemed unplayable by the appointed soloist and his operas puzzled many at first hearing. Tippett embraced the influences of jazz, blues and Indonesian gamelan percussion. Those wishing to explore his music should start with the Concerto for Double String Orchestra, the opera The Midsummer Marriage and the beautiful Triple Concerto. Anyone who does will be rewarded.