The Music and Thought of Michael Tippett


Printed:	2001	Author:	David Clarke
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press	ISBN:	052158292X
Suppliers:

Modern Times and Metaphysics (Music in the Twentieth Century, 15)
Hardcover (November 2001)
Amazon Review
Synopsis
Michael Tippett is often cast as a composer with a strong visionary streak, but what does that mean for a 20th century artist? In this study, David Clarke explores Tippett's complex creative imagination - its dialogue between a romantic's aspirations to the ideal and absolute, and a modernist's sceptical realism. He shows how the musical formations of works such as "The Midsummer Marriage", "King Priam", and "The Vision of Saint Augustine" resonate with the aesthetic and theoretical ideas of key figures in modern Western culture - some known to have been influential to the composer (such as Jung, Wagner and Yeats), others not usually associated with him (such as Kant, Nietzsche and Adorno). Analyses of late works such as the "Triple Concerto" and "Byzantium" also speculate on Tippett's gay sexuality as a (literally) critical element in his creative and political consciousness.