page_title: Michael Tippett
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Michael Tippett / Life / Later life
caption_attribution_description: Lac Rose (Lac Retba), Dakar, Senegal English: Boats on Lake Retba. Euskara: Retba Lakua. Bertoko biztanle batzuk eta haien txalupak. Nederlands: Lac Rose (zoutwinning)
context_page_description: Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was an English composer who rose to prominence during and immediately after the Second World War. In his lifetime he was sometimes ranked with his contemporary Benjamin Britten as one of the leading British composers of the 20th century. Among his best-known works are the oratorio A Child of Our Time, the orchestral Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli, and the opera The Midsummer Marriage.
  Tippett's talent developed slowly. He withdrew or destroyed his earliest compositions, and was 30 before any of his works were published. Until the mid-to-late 1950s his music was broadly lyrical in character, before changing to a more astringent and experimental style. New influences, including those of jazz and blues after his first visit to America in 1965, became increasingly evident in his compositions. While Tippett's stature with the public continued to grow, not all critics approved of these changes in style, some believing that the quality of his work suffered as a consequence. From around 1976 Tippett's late works began to reflect the works of his youth through a return to lyricism.
context_section_description: In his seventies, Tippett continued to compose and travel, although now handicapped by health problems. His eyesight was deteriorating as a result of macular dystrophy, and he relied increasingly on his musical amanuensis and near namesake Michael Tillett, and on Meirion Bowen, who became Tippett's assistant and closest companion in the remaining years of the composer's life. The main works of the late 1970s were a new opera, The Ice Break, the Symphony No. 4, the String Quartet No. 4 and the  Triple Concerto  for violin, viola and cello. The Ice Break was a reflection of Tippett's American experiences, with a contemporary storyline incorporating race riots and drug-taking. His libretto has been criticised for its awkward attempts at American street vernacular, and the opera has not found a place in the general repertory. Mellers finds that its fusion of "art music, rock ritual and performance art fail to gel". The  Triple Concerto  includes a finale inspired by the  gamelan  music that Tippett absorbed during his visit to Java.
  In 1979 Tippett was made a Companion of Honour (CH). The main composition that occupied him in the early 1980s was his oratorio The Mask of Time, loosely based on Jacob Bronowski's 1973 TV series The Ascent of Man. In Tippett's words, this is an attempt  to deal "with those fundamental matters that bear upon man, his relationship with Time, his place in the world as we know it and in the mysterious universe at large". The oratorio was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for its centenary, and was one of several of Tippett's late compositions that were premièred in America. 
  In 1983 Tippett became president of the London College of Music and was appointed a Member of the Order of Merit (OM).  By the time of his 80th birthday in 1985 he was blind in his right eye, and his output had slowed. Nevertheless, in his final active years he wrote his last opera, New Year. This futuristic fable involving flying saucers, time travel and urban violence was indifferently received on its première in Houston, Texas, on 17 October 1989. Donal Henahan in The New York Times wrote that "Unlike Wagner, [Tippett] does not provide music of enough quality to allow one to overlook textual absurdities and commonplaces." The opera was introduced to Britain in the Glyndebourne Festival of 1990.
  In spite of his deteriorating health, Tippett toured Australia in 1989–90, and also visited Senegal. His last major works, written between 1988 and 1993, were: Byzantium, for soprano and orchestra; the String Quartet No. 5; and The Rose Lake, a "song without words for orchestra" inspired by a visit to Lake Retba in Senegal during his 1990 trip. He intended The Rose Lake to be his farewell, but in 1996 he broke his retirement to write "Caliban's Song" as a contribution to the Purcell tercentenary.
caption: Le Lac Rose (Lake Retba), Senegal
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