Editing Michael Tippett (section)

===General character===
Bowen has called Tippett "a composer of our time", one who engaged with the social, political and cultural issues of his day.<ref>{{cite web|last=Bowen|first= Meirion|title= A Composer of Our Time: How Sir Michael Tippett's Activism Could Be an Inspiring Example in Our Modern World|url= http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/meirion-bowen/michael-tippett_b_3516176.html|publisher= Huffington Post Blog|date= 1 July 2013|access-date= 1 October 2013}}</ref> [[Arnold Whittall]] sees the music as embodying Tippett's philosophy of "ultimately optimistic humanism".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Whittall|first1=Arnold|author1-link=Arnold Whittall|last2=Griffiths|first2=Paul|author2-link=Paul Griffiths (writer)|title= Tippett, Sir Michael (Kemp)|date= January 2011|url= http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t114/e6805?q=Michael+Tippett&search=quick&pos=2&_start=1|publisher= Oxford Companion to Music Online|isbn= 978-0-19-957903-7|access-date= 1 October 2013}} {{subscription}}</ref> Rather than ignoring the barbarism of the 20th century, says Kemp, Tippett chose through his works to seek "to preserve or remake those values that have been perverted, while at the same time never losing sight of the contemporary reality".<ref name= Kemp481>Kemp, pp. 481–482</ref> The key early work in this respect is ''A Child of Our Time'', of which Clarke writes: "[t]he words of the oratorio's closing ensemble, 'I would know my shadow and my light, So shall I at last be whole', have become canonical in commentary on Tippett ... this [Jungian] statement crystallizes an ethic, and aesthetic, central to his world-view, and one which underlies all his text-based works".<ref name= grove/>

Sceptical critics such as the musicologist Derrick Puffett have argued that Tippett's craft as a composer was insufficient for him to deal adequately with the task that he had set himself of "transmut[ing] his personal and private agonies into ... something universal and impersonal".<ref name= Puffett/> [[Michael Kennedy (music critic)|Michael Kennedy]] has referred to Tippett's "open‐eyed, even naive outlook on the world", while accepting the technical sophistication of his music.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kennedy|first=Michael|author-link=Michael Kennedy (music critic)|chapter=Tippett, Michael|date= 21 May 2013|url= http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t237/e10288?q=Michael+Tippett&search=quick&pos=3&_start=1|title=Oxford Dictionary of Music Online|isbn= 978-0-19-957810-8|access-date= 1 October 2013}} {{subscription}}</ref> Others have acknowledged his creative ingenuity and willingness to adopt whatever means or techniques were necessary to fit his intentions.<ref name= odnb/><ref>Bowen, p. 154</ref>

Tippett's music is marked by the expansive nature of his melodic line—the ''[[The Daily Telegraph|Daily Telegraph]]''{{'}}s [[Ivan Hewett]] refers to his "astonishingly long-breathed melodies".<ref name= Hewett/> According to Jones, a further element of the "individual voice" that emerged in 1935 was Tippett's handling of rhythm and counterpoint, demonstrated in the First String Quartet—Tippett's first use of the [[additive rhythm]] and cross-rhythm [[polyphony]] which became part of his musical signature.<ref>Jones, pp. 207–208</ref><ref>Tippett, quoted from liner notes in Jones, p. 208</ref>{{#tag:ref|"Additive rhythm" is defined by Nicholas Jones as "the technique whereby a regular pulse is replaced by a series of irregular rhythmic metres".<ref>Jones, p. 208</ref>|group= n}} This approach to metre and rhythm is derived in part from Bartók and Stravinsky but also from the English madrigalists.<ref name= Milner/> Sympathy with the past, observed by Colin Mason in an early appraisal of the composer's work,<ref name= Mason/> was at the root of the [[Neoclassicism (music)|neoclassicism]] that is a feature of Tippett's music, at least until the Second Symphony (1957).<ref>Whittall (2013), p. 13</ref><ref>Gloag, "Tippett's Second Symphony", pp. 78–94</ref>

In terms of tonality, Tippett shifted his ground in the course of his career. His earlier works, up to ''The Midsummer Marriage'', are key-centred, but thereafter he moved through [[Polytonality|bitonality]] into what the composer [[Charles Fussell]] has called "the freely-organized harmonic worlds" of the Third Symphony and ''The Ice Break''.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Fussell |first=Charles |author-link=Charles Fussell |title=Book review: Arnold Whittall: ''The Music of Britten and Tippett'' |journal=[[The Musical Quarterly]]|volume= 70|issue= 3|date=Summer 1984|pages=413–416|jstor= 742046| doi = 10.1093/mq/lxx.3.413 }}</ref> Although Tippett flirted with [[Twelve-tone technique|the "twelve-tone" technique]]—he introduced a twelve-tone theme into the "storm" prelude that begins ''The Knot Garden''—Bowen records that he generally rejected [[serialism]] as incompatible with his musical aims.<ref>{{cite book|last= Bowen|first= Meiron|title= Britten, Tippett and the Second English Music Renaissance|url= http://www.meirion-bowen.com/mbartmtbritten.htm|publisher= London Sinfonietta Britten–Tippett Festival 1986 (Programme Note)|date= September 1986|access-date= 16 June 2016}}</ref>