Tippett and the Orchestra
SINCE he wrote his opera The Mid- summer Marriage, Michael Tip- pett, already the great eccentric among English composers, has advanced perceptibly along that path until his music now begins at time to approach the almost lunatic inspiration of Messiaen's or Scriabin's. This first became marked in the Piano Concerto a couple of years ago, and he has now followed this up with a Symphony No. 2, com- missioned by the BBC and given its first perfor- mance last week, which is very much of the same phase, although more 'diverse in mood and freer in formal treatment. `Very strange and lovely' is how at one stage of its composition it was un- selfconsciously described to me by the composer, who often gives the impression of being de- lightedli amazed at the music that comes out of him. The adjectives are both right, and in general the stranger the music the lovelier. The two qualities arc most concentrated in the formally rhapsodic last movement, the predominant characteristic of which is defined by Tippett as `fantasy,' and in the slow movement, where the sense of `tenderness' that he suggests as a definition of its emotional character is conveyed in even more `fantastic' musical terms.
Such fantasy 'has always been abundant in Tippett's music, in melody, harmony, counter- point and rhythm. Now, like Vaughan Williams in his recent symphonies, he has taken to the delights of orchestral sound, and is allowing his fantasy free reign in this branch of musical inven- tion too. It is this that yields the strangest things of all in his recent music—and contributes to many of the loveliest. Extraordinary' sounds emerge in the new symphony from trumpet, horns and trombones. Some new and magical effects of orchestral harmony and sonority arise, as in the slow movement of the Piano Concerto, out of Tippett's use of the piano. In cantabile
writing for strings, solo or concerted, he has always been a master, and there are beautiful examples here in every movement. He is least suc- cessful in his use of the woodwind. The second theme of the first movement, a lyrical melody with an elaborate but delicate contrapuntal accompani- ment scored for this department of the orchestra, was confused and ineffective in sound. This move- ment was altogether the least pleasing orchestrally, and although most of its busy figurations are on the strings, the general effect reminded me of the ill-judged and uneuphonious brassy rattle of the corresponding movement in Bartok's Second Piano Concerto, scored without strings at all.
Even where the sound does come off, Tippett's writing for the instruments is often awkward, and there are many musicians, especially among orchestral players, who would maintain that he simply cannot score. The leader of the BBC Symphony Orchestra refused to attempt the scherzo, an enchantingly gay and rhythmically witty piece, at the speed that the music obviously needed, on the grounds that it was impossible for the orchestra at that speed. (At the repeat performance they did take it slightly faster.) There is more to scoring, however, than writing well for the instruments, and out of the very awkward- ness of his writing Tippett has created a style of orchestration that, despite its occasional failures, is more personal and original, and has added more to our experience of sound than that of many more `competent' Writers. Without trying to equate Tippett with Beethoven on any terms, it is worth reniembering that as Beethoven grew older, and longer out of touch with the physical sound of instruments, his writing, first for piano, then for voice, then for String quartet, grew steadily more strained and unpraCtical. We accept this as part of the voice of late Beethoven, and it must be the same with Tippett. There is no voice in English music today more worth listening
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