The Music and Thought of Michael Tippett Modern Times and Metaphysics

This multi-faceted study looks in detail at the music and thought of Michael Tippett. David Clarke shows how Tippett has roots in the nineteenth century and also reveals his connections with larger developments in Western cultural thinking. The book is made distinctive by its strong interdisciplinary element. It relates observations on the music to ideas in literature, philosophy and literary theory and addresses issues concerned with modernity and postmodernity. Tippett's homosexuality is also considered as a factor in his makeup as a composer.

Tippett is often cast as a composer with a strong visionary streak, but what does that mean for a twentieth-century artist? In this multi-faceted 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 sexuality as a (literally) critical element in his creative and political consciousness.

Acknowledgements; References to Tippett's scores and essays; 1. Tippett and the 'world vision' of modernity; 2. The significance of the concept 'image' in Tippett's musical thought: a perspective from Jung; 3. Back to Nietzsche? Transformations of the dionysiac in The Midsummer Marriage and King Priam; 4. Metaphysics in a cold climate: The Vision of Saint Augustine; 5. 'Shall we ...? Affirm!' The ironic and the sublime in The Mask of Time; 6. The meaning of 'lateness': mediations of work, self and society in Tippett's Triple Concerto; 7. The golden bird and the porcelain bowl: Byzantium and the politics of artefacts; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

This multi-faceted study looks in detail at the music and thought of Michael Tippett. The book is made distinctive by its strong interdisciplinary element: it relates observations on the music to ideas in literature, philosophy and literary theory and addresses issues concerned with modernity and postmodernity.

David Clarke is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and is one of the leading commentators on the music of Tippett.