Additional Assignments

1. Write a summary of the essay on Menotti.

2. Have you ever heard any of Menotti's operas? In your opin­ion, what place in Western music does Menotti occupy?

3. Do you share Menotti's views on opera? If not, give your rea­sons.

MICHAEL TIPPETT: A CHILD OF OUR TIME

Michael Tippett (b. 1905) has become a dominant figure in con­temporary English music as a result of his concern, projected through composing, writing, and teaching, with present-day social and artistic problems. His reputation, like that of most of his contempo­raries, is based on comparatively few works. The concerto for double string orchestra and the string quartets are examples of polyphonic method combined with symphonic structure that has proved a germi­nating principle for many modern English composers. The oratorio A Child of Our Time was an impassioned protest against oppression and persecution, and further aspects of Tippett's uncompromising in­tegrity and continual struggle to express his "inner life" through words and music can be found in the operas The Midsummer Mar­riage, King Priam (for which he wrote his own libretti) and the cantata The Vision of St. Augustine for baritone solo, chorus and orchestra.

From The Larousse Encyclopedia of Music

* * *

Most composers today are eclectics who, since they no longer inherit a tradition automatically from their immediate predecessors, must forge their own links with the past as best they can. With the enormous increase in our knowledge of the past, "tradition" is now the whole history of music. Composers will choose their ancestry from whatever means most to them; consequently there is not just one contemporary language but a plurality. Those who find tradition a burden may decide to ignore it altogether, just as others are tempted to seek refuge in the simpler, safer world of the past. But knowledge of the past need not be inhibiting; it can and should be a rich stimulus to the creative imagination. Michael Tippett has always found this to be so; his music is a continuous and fertile dialogue

with the past. When Tippett alludes to the music of his predecessors - and his allusions are almost always conscious - it is both a gesture of the kinship he feels with them and at the same time a desire and a need to give his music great resonance, to

enlarge its range of meaning.

Michael Tippett's long apprenticeship as a composer came to an end finally in 1939 with the creation of his first masterpiece, the Concerto for Double String Orchestra. However, it was not until the appearance of A Child of Our Time that he at last achieved na­tional recognition. Though conceived in 1938 and completed in 1941, it was not performed until March 1944 when Tippett was 39.

The composer himself has provided a full account of the genesis of the work. It grew out of Tippett's desire to give some kind of artistic expression to his social and political preoccupations during the 1930s, embracing his reactions to the First World War, social depri­vation, unemployment and the aggressive postures of the Nazi gov­ernment in Germany from 1933.

An incident which seemed symptomatic of the self-defeating, vio­lent forces at work in Europe at the time eventually formed the ba­sis of his work. In November 1938, a seventeen-year-old Polish Jew from a family long settled in Germany, entered the German Embassy in Paris and shot a diplomat - an act of desperation arising directly from the harsh anti-semitic policies of the Nazis. (...)

Though in his libretto Tippett deliberately adopts a style derived from the "folk-language" of the Negro spirituals incorporated into it, he also draws on poetic images from T.S. Eliot,* Wilfred Owen* and W.B. Yeats.* Above all, the text is concerned to embody Tip­pett's Jungian philosophy.* Its overall organisation was inspired by Charles Jennens' libretto for Handel's Messiah (1742). Thus Part 1 established the general state of oppression in society, progressing from the cosmic to the human dimension; Part 2 focuses on the effects of this situation on an individual and the disastrous consequences of seeking justice through violence; Part 3 reflects on the preceding drama and considers its implications.

The musical structures of Tippett's oratorio are adopted from J.S. Bach's Passions. Recitative is used for narrative purposes, dramatic choruses participate in the action and the emotional responses of the protagonists are given expressions in contemplative arias. In place of Bach's Lutheran chorales, Tippett decided to use Negro spirituals to symbolize the agony of the Jews in Hitler's Europe, just as they earlier had reflected the suffering of the American Negroes in slav­ery. Moreover, their jazz-related musical language would, Tippett felt, evoke a universal response. Musical elements derived from the spirituals are also utilised throughout the work as a means of unification.

From: Music and Musicians, 1985; Music Teacher, 1986

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 808