Editing Michael Tippett (section)

====First period: 1935 to late 1950s====
Kemp identifies the String Quartet No. 1 (1935) as marking Tippett's discovery of his individual voice.<ref>Kemp, p. 85</ref>{{#tag:ref|Tippett revised the quartet in 1943 by merging the first two movements into one, a change about which, Whittall records, he later expressed some reservations.<ref>Whittall (1982), p. 32</ref> |group= n}} According to the composer [[Alan Ridout]], the work stamped its character on Tippett's first period, and together with the second and third quartets of 1942 and 1946 it typifies his style up to ''[[The Midsummer Marriage]]''.<ref>Ridout, p. 181</ref> In the two works that immediately followed the first quartet, Bowen finds the Piano Sonata No. 1 (1938) full of the young composer's inventiveness,<ref name= Bowen93>Bowen, p. 93</ref> while Matthews writes of the [[Concerto for Double String Orchestra (Tippett)|Concerto for Double String Orchestra]] (1939): "[I]t is the rhythmic freedom of the music, its joyful liberation from orthodox notions of stress and phrase length, that contributes so much to its vitality".<ref>Matthews, p. 27</ref> Both of these works show influence of folk music, and the finale of the Piano Sonata is marked by innovative jazz syncopations.<ref name= grove/><ref name= Bowen93/> According to Schuttenhelm, the Double Concerto marks the proper beginning of Tippett's maturity as an orchestral composer.<ref>Schuttenhelm (2014), p. 35</ref>

{{Quote box|width=300px|bgcolor=#E0E6F8|align=right|quote= Although [Tippett] is no imitator of archaic styles, he goes back to old music to find in it what he wants for the present day&nbsp;... He feels that in the musical outlook of the 16th and 17th century lies the clue to what composers in this century should do in order to restore to their music a greater measure of contact with and intelligibility to the general public.|salign = right |source= Colin Mason in 1946, analysing Tippett's early career.<ref name= Mason>{{cite journal|last= Mason|first= Colin|title= Michael Tippett|journal=[[The Musical Times]]|volume= 87|issue= 1239|date= May 1946|pages= 137–141|doi= 10.2307/933950|jstor= 933950}} {{subscription}}</ref>}}
In ''A Child of Our Time'' Tippett was, in Kemp's view, wholly successful in integrating the language of the spirituals with his own musical style. Tippett had obtained recordings of American singing groups, especially the [[Hall Johnson|Hall Johnson Choir]],<ref name= Kemp164>Kemp, p. 164</ref> which provided him with a model for determining the relationships between solo voices and chorus in the spirituals.<ref name=K172>Kemp, p. 172</ref> Thus, Kemp believes, the fourth spiritual "O by and by" sounds almost as if it had been composed by Tippett.<ref name= Kemp164/> The composer'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{{' "}}.<ref>Tippett (1944), pp. ii–iv</ref>

In Tippett's [[Symphony No. 1 (Tippett)|Symphony No. 1]] (1945), his only large-scale work between ''A Child of Our Time'' and ''The Midsummer Marriage'', his "gift for launching a confident flow of sharply characterized, contrapuntally combined ideas" is acknowledged by Whittall. The same critic found the symphony's quality uneven, and the orchestral writing weaker than in the Double Concerto.<ref>Whittall (1982), p. 84</ref> Whittall offers nearly unqualified praise for ''The Midsummer Marriage'',<ref name= Whittall141/> a view largely echoed by Mellers, who saw the perceived "difficulty" of the music as "an aspect of its truth". He considered the opera one of the best musical-theatrical works of its era.<ref>Mellers, p. 190</ref>

Three major works of the 1950s round off Tippett's first period: the Corelli ''Fantasia'' (1953), in which Clarke sees, in the ''alla pastorale'' section, the composer's instrumental writing at its best;<ref name= grove/> the mildly controversial Piano Concerto (1955), which Whittall regards as one of the composer's most intriguing works—an attempt to "make the piano sing";<ref>Whittall (1982), p. 155</ref> and the [[Symphony No. 2 (Tippett)|Symphony No. 2]] (1957) which Tippett acknowledges as a turning-point in his music.<ref>Tippett and Bowen, p. 93</ref> Until this point, says Matthews, Tippett's style had remained broadly tonal. The Second Symphony was his first essay in [[polytonality]], paving the way to the dissonance and chromaticism of subsequent works.<ref>Matthews, p. 103</ref> [[Anthony Milner (composer)|Milner]], too, recognises the pivotal position of this symphony in Tippett's development which, he says, both sums up the style of the late 1950s and presages the changes to come.<ref name= Milner>{{cite journal|author-link= Anthony Milner (composer)|last= Milner|first= Anthony|title= The Music of Michael Tippett|journal=[[The Musical Quarterly]]|volume= 50|issue= 4|date= October 1964|pages=423–438|jstor= 740954|doi=10.1093/mq/l.4.423}}</ref>