The Selected Letters of Michael Tippett, Faber and Faber (2005).

Introduction

Throughout his life, which spanned almost the whole of the twentieth century, the English composer Michael Tippett (1905--98) was a prolific letter writer. In 1944, writing to Douglas Newton, his friend and one-time collaborator on the libretto for the opera The Midsummer Marriage, Tippett remarked, ‘I never seem to write 1 letter but I write 3.’ The recipients of his letters included friends and lovers; colleagues in the musical profession and in the broadcasting media; poets, dramatists and critics; and figures from the worlds of publishing, politics, pacifism and social affairs. That such a huge amount of this correspondence has survived and is already housed in major libraries around the world is itself indicative of its importance. Taken overall, it reveals a uniquely personal side to the composer, which until now has remained largely unknown to the public at large.

Bearing witness to the atrocities and the advancements of the twentieth century, the letters of Michael Tippett display a powerful and fertile mind struggling with the relevance of diverse and conflicting ideologies in an attempt to shape a universal artistic expression embodying the aspirations of humanity. Tippett’s music, in which are combined poetic metaphors, historical archetypes and the driving forces behind the human spirit, has a complexity equal only to that of his character as its creator. That complexity is manifest, too, in the letters written in parallel with his compositions. Tippett’s letters place the reader at the composer’s side, within the historical moment, as a witness to the creative process. They allow the reader to observe his reactions to shifts in aesthetics and style and to see the most intimate and vulnerable side of a man keenly aware of the inner sensibilities of the human psyche.