Michael Tippett (1905–1998)
Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-3
Among the most arresting features discernible in the
output of Sir Michael Tippett is that the majority of his
most important works fall into recognisably classical
categories (operas, symphonies, concertos, string
quartets and piano sonatas) that occur throughout his
composing career. So with the four piano sonatas, which
encompass a time-frame of 48 years and take in his
range of creative preoccupations, from the vigorous neoclassicism
of the 1930s, through the experimental phase
of the 1960s, to a renewed involvement with the
‘classical tradition’ of the 1970s and the process of
summation and synthesis that took place during the
1980s. Of equal note is the fact that, in common with his
string quartets, no two of Tippett’s sonatas have the
same number and arrangement of movements, typical of
a composer who sought new solutions to the challenges
posed by large-scale instrumental writing over the
previous two centuries.
By his own admission Tippett was a slow developer.
Whereas his younger contemporary Benjamin Britten
had established a fair reputation by his mid-twenties,
Tippett evolved slowly and fitfully as a composer,
withdrawing all of his music written before the First
String Quartet, completed in 1935, though substantially
revised in 1943. Compared to the Beethovenian density
of this piece, the First Piano Sonata (1936-7) is both
more relaxed in manner and more varied in expressive
content. At its première, given by Phyllis Sellick in
London in November 1937, it had the title Fantasy
Sonata, indicating the musical range found within its
clear-cut, four-movement form.
The first movement begins with a theme, alternately
vigorous and flowing, which is made the basis of five
variations. The first is lively and capricious, the second
hectically virtuosic, while the third brings forth a lyrical
new counter-melody. The fourth variation trips along in
blithe syncopation, then the gamelan-like fifth emerges
mysteriously from the depths, before a coda repeats the
theme largely as before. The second movement takes the
Scottish folk-song ‘Ca’ the cowes tae the knowes’ as the
basis for its increasingly elaborate and cumulatively
expressive variants, before a return to its pensive
origins. The third movement is cast in sonata form, its
forceful and ruminative main themes made the subject
of intensive discussion, before moving into a subtly
altered recapitulation. In evoking jazz and popular
music, the rondo fourth movement ranks among
Tippett’s most engaging pieces, concluding the work in
a mood of boisterous humour, and, in its rhythmic
freedom, anticipating the Concerto for Double String
Orchestra (1939) and Second String Quartet (1942), as
well as two post-war instrumental works, the First
Symphony (1945) and the Third String Quartet (1946).
One of the greatest surprises for those who had kept
abreast of Tippett’s creative evolution was his seeming
abandonment of the ‘ecstatic lyricism’ that permeated
his music during much of the 1950s, notably his first
opera The Midsummer Marriage (1952), the Fantasia
Concertante on a Theme of Corelli (1953), and the
Piano Concerto (1955), for an idiom harmonically more
austere and formally more fragmentary. Hence the
uncertainty which greeted his second opera King Priam
at its 1962 première, to which the Second Piano Sonata,
itself composed in 1962 and first performed by Margaret
Kitchin that September, might be viewed as a formal and
expressive pendant. The piece derives its tightly knit,
one-movement form from the fantasy procedures
beloved of English composers from Byrd to Purcell,
while its mosaic-like construction evokes Stravinsky,
whose influence on Tippett had been evident since the
Second Symphony (1957), and who had long eschewed
linear development for the succession of contrasted
musical types.
There are eight musical types in this sonata, which
evolves starkly yet inevitably over its eight sections.
Section one presents the first five such types in stark
juxtaposition, respectively forceful, angular, energetic,
lyrical and capricious, before section two takes the
second, third and fourth as the basis for greater
elaboration. Section three introduces the sixth musical
type, inward-looking but diverse in terms of gesture and
sonority, at some length, while section four returns to a
hectic alternation of the third, fourth and fifth types.
Section five is devoted to the seventh type, making the
most virtuoso use of the piano, while section six brings
further elaboration of the second, third and fourth types.
Section seven focuses on the eighth musical type,
affording a calm, mysterious repose before section eight,
which brings all except the fifth and eighth types into a
series of collisions worthy of the ‘jam sessions’ familiar
from jazz of the period, and culminating in the
imperious return of the first type. This is gradually
reduced to an alternation of loud and quiet chords, which
latter manage to have the last word.
Tippett then opened-out the possibilities of this
sonata in the Concerto for Orchestra (1965) and the
oratorio The Vision of St Augustine (1965). The
remainder of the 1960s was taken up with his third opera
The Knot Garden (1970), in which his long-standing
interest in jazz and blues become further integrated into
a musical idiom that was as wide-ranging stylistically as
it was contemporary in expression. Following this,
Tippett daringly evoked the example of Beethoven in his
Third Symphony (1972), an ambitious conflation of
abstract symphonic, and graphically illustrative
thinking. Yet as Beethoven had followed his allembracing
Ninth Symphony with the rigorous piano
Bagatelles, Tippett followed his own symphony with a
Third Piano Sonata, completed during 1973 and first
performed by Paul Crossley that May, the most
‘pianistic’ of all his sonatas.
The Beethoven connection remains strong,
however, not least in the opening movement, a compact
sonata piece whose respectively driving and lyrical main
themes are drawn into a sustained process of
development. This culminates in the transformed
recapitulation of both themes, before a brief and openended
coda. The central slow movement begins with a
succession of chordal statements, which are the basis of
the four variations that follow. The intent of these
variations is of cumulative expressive intensity, each
transposing the chord sequence upwards so that it comes
full circle when the fourth variation is reached. Most
notable is the unadorned melody to emerge at the start of
the third variation, serenely marking the effective midpoint
of the sonata. The finale is all coruscating trills and
hammered chords, its relentless onward drive reaching a
point of repose before returning methodically to the
initial idea. A brief coda rounds off the work in gestural
and uncompromising terms.
As he entered his seventies, Tippett betrayed
absolutely no sign of compromise in his composing.
Along with such large-scale pieces as his fourth opera
The Ice Break (1976) and oratorio The Mask of Time
(1983) came such abstract works as the Fourth
Symphony (1977), the Fourth String Quartet (1978) and
Triple Concerto (1979), a group of works that was to
conclude with the Fourth Piano Sonata (1984), which in
turn heralded the ‘Indian summer’ that sustained itself
through to the composer’s 88th year in 1993.
Richard Whitehouse