A Child of Our Time
He left the RCM in December 1928, but after two years spent unsuccessfully attempting to launch his career as a composer, he returned to the college in 1930 for a further period of study, principally under the professor of counterpoint, R. O.
[1] In the economically depressed 1930s Tippett adopted a strongly left-wing political stance, and became increasingly involved with the unemployed, both through his participation in the North Yorkshire work camps,[n 1] and as founder of the South London Orchestra made up of out-of-work musicians.
[4] In 1935 he embraced pacifism, but by this time he was becoming overtaken by a range of emotional problems and uncertainties, largely triggered by the break-up of an intense relationship with the painter Wilfred Franks.
[11] In November 1938 the assassination in Paris of a German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Jewish refugee, precipitated the "Kristallnacht" pogrom across Germany.
[14] The musicologist Michael Steinberg comments that, given his anti-Semitism, Eliot may have been an inappropriate choice of collaborator,[11] though Tippett considered the poet his spiritual and artistic mentor, and felt that his counsel would be crucial.
Eliot said he would consider the matter as long as I provided him with a precise scheme of musical sections and an exact indication of the numbers and kinds of words for each stage".
When Tippett produced his detailed draft, Eliot advised the composer to write his own libretto, suggesting that his own superior poetry would either distract attention from the music, or otherwise would be "swallowed up by it".
[19] At the time Tippett was writing the text, he was consumed by the break-up with Franks and felt "unable to come to terms with either the wretchedness of the separation or the emotional turmoil it let loose.
"[22] Commentators have identified numerous works as textual influences, including Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral and Ash Wednesday, Goethe's Faust and Wilfred Owen's poem "The Seed".
The first, fourth and fifth of these are placed at the ends of the oratorio's three parts, "Deep River" as the finale expressing, according to Tippett, the hope of a fresh spring after a long, dark winter.
Kenneth Gloag, in his detailed analysis of the oratorio, writes: "As well as constructing the pathway through the dramatic narrative, the five spirituals also combine to provide moments of focus and repose ... giving shape to both the musical and literary dimensions of the work".
After the outbreak of war in September 1939, Tippett joined the Peace Pledge Union—with which he had been informally associated since 1935—and applied for registration as a conscientious objector,[6] although his case was not considered by the tribunal until February 1942.
[30] After completing the composition of A Child of Our Time in 1941, Tippett worked on other projects, feeling that the oratorio's pacifist message was out of touch with the prevailing national mood.
[6] After his release from prison in August 1943, with encouragement from Britten and the youthful music critic John Amis, Tippett began to make arrangements for the oratorio's first performance.
[31] Goehr agreed to conduct, but overrode the composer's initial view that Morley College's orchestra could handle the work and insisted that professionals were needed.
Britten's connection with Sadler's Wells Opera brought three soloists to the project: Joan Cross (soprano), Peter Pears (tenor), and Roderick Lloyd (bass).
It pointed to the hope expressed in the final spiritual, "Deep River", and concluded that despite some weak passages the work created a successful partnership between art and philosophy.
[38] In The Musical Times Edwin Evans praised Tippett's text: "simple and direct ... he has wisely resisted any temptation to use quasi-biblical or 'Pilgrim's Progress' language."
[39] In his autobiography, Tippett makes only muted references to the premiere, noting that the event "had some mixed reviews", but in a letter to his friend Francesca Allinson he professed himself delighted with the breadth of response to the work: "It's got over not only to the ordinary listeners but even to the intellectuals like [Mátyás] Seiber, who has written to me of some of the 'lovely texture of some of the numbers'".
[45] In the early 1950s Tippett attended a performance of the oratorio at the Radio Hall in Brussels, after which members of the audience expressed to him their gratitude for the work which, they said, exactly represented their wartime experiences.
[45] In December 1952 he travelled to Turin for a radio performance, conducted by Herbert von Karajan and with operatic stars Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Nicolai Gedda among the soloists.
Conversely, according to the Times report, HaBoker's critic had "found that the composition had moved everyone to the depths of his soul ... no Jewish composer had ever written anything so sublime on the theme of the Holocaust.
In his memoirs Tippett mentions another performance on that American tour, at a women's college in Baltimore, in which the male chorus and soloists were black Catholic ordinands from a local seminary.
[50] The first significant American presentations of the work came a decade later: at Cleveland in 1977 where Prince Charles, who was visiting, delayed his departure so that he could attend,[51] and at Carnegie Hall, New York, where Colin Davis conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.
Reviewing this performance for The New York Times, Donal Henahan was unconvinced that the work's "sincerity and unimpeachable intentions add[ed] up to important music".
Anna Picard, writing in The Independent, recognised the work's sincerity but found the dramatisation of its pacifist message wholly inappropriate: "Do we really need to see a dozen well-fed actors and singers stripped and led into a smoking pit in order to understand the Holocaust?
"[55] Anthony Holden in The Observer was more positive, commenting that "If you must stage a work intended for concert performance ... it is hard to imagine a more effective version than Kent's, shot through with heavy symbolism of which Tippett would surely have approved."
[59] Tippett's instructions in the score specify that "the spirituals should not be thought of as congregational hymns, but as integral parts of the Oratorio; nor should they be sentimentalised but sung with a strong underlying beat and slightly 'swung'".
From among the diverse musical features Steinberg draws attention to rhythms in the chorus "When Shall The Usurer's City Cease" that illustrate Tippett's knowledge of and feel for the English madrigal.
Kemp finds in one of the choruses an allusion to "Sei gegrüsset" from Bach's St John Passion, and hears traces of Elgar in the soprano's solo "O my son!"
