Michael Tippett’s Fifth String Quartet

A Study in Vision and Revision

Thomas Schuttenhelm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138218321
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315437316
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Classical Music

Thomas Schuttenhelm provides a detailed account of the events leading up to and throughout the compositional process associated with Michael Tippett's Fifth String Quartet and a comprehensive analysis of the entire quartet. The commentary discusses this work in the context of Tippett's creative development and places it within the historical context of the genre of the string quartet. The commentary includes interviews with the members of the Lindsay String Quartet, who premiered the work, as well as previously unpublished letters from the composer and interviews with Tippett in which he discusses the quartet in detail. Special attention is given to Tippett's preliminary attempts, which were only recently discovered (2011) and to the evidence that suggests he altered the original ending. Included are images from the composer's sketchbooks and manuscripts, as well as the original beginning and the altered ending.

1 Introduction

Michael Tippett’s Fifth String Quartet (1990–1) is a strikingly translucent work. It is filled with spectral resonances that are constructed from fragile webs of heterophony and infused with inter-opus allusions that shimmer within a conceptual framework. The quartet was produced near the completion of a significant period in Tippett’s creative development, and it represented a near fulfillment of the mandate, set by his mentor T.S. Eliot, for a ‘continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.’¹ Paradoxically, it remains one of Tippett’s most deeply personal compositions, in which his desire to invent increasingly original material struggled against his memory of music from the recent and distant past.

The Fifth String Quartet warrants special attention because of the unusual circumstances in which it was conceived and composed. By recounting both the circumstances that led to the quartet’s inception and the conditions under which it was created, it is possible to gain a greater appreciation for the effort it took to produce and to measure more accurately its significance in the composer’s creative development. Using supporting documentation and evidence from Tippett’s sketches and pencil manuscripts, this book will detail the entire compositional process associated with the Fifth String Quartet: from the pre-conditional experiences that influenced its conception; through the visions and revisions that he experienced during the image-accretion and transformational-notation phases; through the subsequent rehearsal session with the Lindsay String Quartet, during which some additional revisions were made; and finally, to a study of the quartet’s reception.²

The Lindsay String Quartet is a common link between Tippett’s Fourth and Fifth Quartets. The collaborations between the Lindsay Quartet and the composer (in advance of the premiere of the Fifth String Quartet), some of which were captured on film, constitute part of the critical pre-history of the subsequent performances and their interpretive strategies, including suggestions about articulation and voicing, which have been thoroughly integrated into the published score. Together with his amanuensis, Michael Tillett; his companion, Meirion Bowen; and the staff from both the Tippett Office and his publisher, Schott, most especially, Sally Groves—the dedicatee of the quartet, the Lindsay String Quartet served as the essential support network that enabled the composer to persevere and flourish at precisely this period of his creative development.

The Fifth Quartet is exceptional in Tippett’s oeuvre because it was one of the few pieces that demanded further revision to complete. Typically in his compositional process, Tippett preferred to contemplate and design his pieces far in advance and only began writing down the notes when he was confident that the basic planning had been done. As a result, he rarely revised works after he had completed them. Some notable exceptions include the First String Quartet (1934–5), Piano Sonata No. 1 (1936–8), and the finale to the Third String Quartet (1945–6).³ Unlike the First and Third String Quartets, which were revised long after their creative cycles were complete, the Fifth Quartet underwent a critical reevaluation during the compositional process and immediately after it was complete, while it was still being rehearsed by the Lindsay Quartet in advance of its premiere. These revisionary acts had a profound effect on the shaping of the quartet and resulted in an entirely new beginning and ending for the quartet. The original and revised beginning and ending will be treated separately below in a manner that only increases our appreciation for this exceptional work.

Notes

1 See T.S. Eliot, ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, in Selected Essays: 1917–1932 (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1932), 7.

2 The Lindsay String Quartet programmed Tippett’s Fifth String Quartet on its tour. The program also included Haydn’s Quartet in C, Opus 20, No. 2 and Schubert’s Quartet in D minor, D.810 ‘Death and the Maiden.’ For more information on Tippett’s compositional process, see Thomas Schuttenhelm, ‘Between Image and the Imagination: Tippett’s Creative Process’, in The Cambridge Companion to Michael Tippett, eds. Kenneth Gloag and Nicholas Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 103–18.

3 See Michael Tippett, ‘The Score’, in Tippett on Music, ed. Meirion Bowen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 266.

2 Pre-conditions

The Fifth String Quartet embodies the culmination of Tippett’s long-standing interest in the genre. Tippett was ‘invincibly drawn to the medium,’ and each of his five quartets represents a singular achievement.¹ His First String Quartet was the work through which he found his own individual voice and the first composition to enter his permanent catalogue.² The Second String Quartet (1941–2) was created from music of decidedly mixed traditions, what Tippett described as a ‘combination and contrast of movements—bringing 4 equal types of movement to birth by procuration of 4 (or less or more) techniques which will be able to handle 4 sensibilities.’³ Combining formal elegance with freedom of invention, the Third String Quartet (1945–6) demonstrated the ways in which disciplined counterpoint could be used to reach new heights of personal expression.⁴ In the Fourth String Quartet (1977–8) Tippett allowed conceptual dimensions to surpass conventional determinants. Such an approach required him to reconfigure the traditional hierarchies commonly found in the genre of the string quartet, and by doing so he produced a work of post-historical proportions.

The Fourth String Quartet was premiered by the Lindsay String Quartet on 20 May 1979, at the Bath Festival in South West England.⁵ In fact, the pre-conditional phase of the creative cycle associated with the Fifth Quartet can be traced back to that same evening when, after the performance, Tippett turned to first violinist in the Lindsay Quartet, Peter Cropper, and confessed: ‘I think I might write a fifth quartet.’⁶ This was not an uncommon experience for the composer: listening to Walter Gieseking perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 initiated the creative cycle for the Piano Concerto (1953–5); hearing a performance of a Vivaldi concerto provided him with the inspiration to begin his Second Symphony (1956–7); attending a performance at the Edinburgh Festival that included Pli selon pli by Pierre Boulez suggested the conceptual polarities used in his Third Symphony (1970–2); and listening to Georg Solti rehearse Byzantium (1988–90) was the einfall-experience that started the creative process that resulted in The Rose Lake (1991–3). Cropper knew Tippett was going to be occupied with various commissions and commitments that had been scheduled in advance and thus did not immediately press the composer about the matter. But when Tippett decided to begin work on his Fifth Quartet, he contacted Cropper again and said to him: ‘Now Peter, don’t be disappointed, you know I’m getting on now. I’m over 85. I’m not sure I can carry on the same tenet of the other quartets. But I’ll have a go.’⁷

Shortly before beginning work on the quartet, Tippett had entered into one of his most productive periods, and in the span of five years he produced three major works: Byzantium, the Fifth Quartet, and The Rose Lake. This was a remarkably short period of time, especially for a composer who typically required long periods of contemplation and planning before executing new works. The style, structure, and accelerated creative cycles associated with this trilogy of late-period compositions also demand further study.

Notes

1 Meirion Bowen, ‘String Quartet No. 5’, CD liner notes to Tippett: The 5 String Quartets, Lindsay Quartet (ASV, DC DCS 231, 1993).

2 Prior to the First String Quartet Tippett composed a Quartet in F major (1928, rev. 1930) and a Quartet in F minor (1929). See Ian Kemp, Tippett: The Composer and His Music (London: Eulenburg and New York: Da Capo Press, 1984), 498.

3 Michael Tippett, The Selected Letters of Michael Tippett, ed. Thomas Schuttenhelm (London: Faber & Faber, 2005), 248.

4 String Quartet No. 3 benefited from a minor revisionary process: the fourth and fifth movements are now performed attacca. See Tippett, ‘The Score’, in Tippett on Music, 266–7.

5 The premiere performance was originally scheduled for 1978, but Tippett was unable to complete the piece in time. See Tippett, The Selected Letters of Michael Tippett, 269.

6 Tony Scull (dir.), Tippett’s New Quartet (Clarion Call Productions, Yorkshire Television, 1992).

7 Ibid.

3 Creative cycles

Examining Tippett’s creative cycle is to observe his cognitive process, and a close inspection of his manuscripts reveals how creativity and cognition were intimately connected. Tippett’s creative cycle followed a predictable pattern, and he was keenly aware of when each phase was activated and how to manage its progression.¹ As a creative artist, he designated two general categories of activity that enabled him to capture and express this inner flow of experience: ‘one entails spontaneity and accident; the other, a more self-conscious process of testing and measuring.’² Initiating the creative cycle was spontaneous and sudden, but the ‘long and protracted’ act of ‘testing and measuring’ took considerable effort and time. Quite often Tippett required a period of contemplation in which he would determine the specific parameters of the composition before he could begin to notate its details into a manuscript score. He would only proceed to the notational phase—‘finding the notes’—once he was clear about the structure and character of the work.³

Tippett claimed to have developed this practice from his mentor T.S. Eliot:

One has to make the concept extraordinarily clear and the measurements extraordinarily clear before searching for the solidarity and actual expressions of the concept. I talked a lot about this with T.S. Eliot because he was fascinated by this division. And he said once, in his rather funny way, ‘Of course, the words come last,’ and it was literally so. […] I’m on that line. Therefore, I know already what the accident is that I’m hoping for; that the spontaneous I want tomorrow is going to fit into that place which I’ve put there today. The trust I have by now, in my own process, is that I have within reason never been let down.⁴

Tippett insisted: ‘There is no invocation, no act of will. The projection or propositions […] I can invent them by the yard but only certain ones will do […] by accretion […] they have to be seminal in some way and then I’m very gradual.’⁵

Tippett’s desire for a ‘gradual’ process resulted in the extended periods he required for his creative cycles, and his sketchbooks and manuscripts often detail the accretive process. But the Fifth Quartet was a curious exception to this practice, and evidence suggests that he commenced with its creative cycle almost immediately after he completed Byzantium, in November or December of 1989. It is unclear whether he began the compositional process for the quartet too hastily and did not allow for the customary period of contemplation or whether, after further consideration, the material that he ‘fit into that place,’ specifically the original draft of the opening measures, did not measure up to the standard or character of the work he had in mind.

Eliot’s influence on Tippett’s compositional process appeared quite early in his creative development. The di...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Page
• Title Title
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of musical examples
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Pre-conditions
• 3 Creative cycles
• 4 Transformation-notation
• 5 Archetypes
• 6 Dreamscapes
• 7 From concept to composition
• 8 First movement: compositional peregrinations
• 9 Interlude
• 10 Second movement
• Bibliography
• Index