Editing Michael Tippett (section)

====Third period: 1977 to 1995====
In the late 1970s Tippett produced three single-movement instrumental works: the [[Symphony No. 4 (Tippett)|Symphony No. 4]] (1977), the String Quartet No. 4 (1978), and the Triple Concerto for violin, viola and cello (1979). The symphony, written in the manner of the [[tone poem]] or symphonic fantasia exemplified by Sibelius,<ref name= Bowen124>Bowen, pp. 124–125</ref> represents what Tippett describes as a birth-to-death cycle, beginning and ending with the sounds of breathing.<ref name= Collisson144>Collisson, pp. 144–145</ref> This effect was initially provided by a wind machine, although other means have been tried, with mixed results—according to Bowen "the sounds emitted can turn out to be redolent of a space-fiction film or a bordello".<ref name= Bowen124/> The Fourth String Quartet, Tippett explains, is an exercise in "finding a sound" that he first encountered in the incidental music to a television programme on [[Rembrandt]].<ref>Tippett, quoted in Jones, p. 220</ref> In the Triple Concerto, which is thematically related to the Fourth Quartet and quotes from it,<ref>Collisson, p. 159</ref> the three solo instruments perform individually rather than as a formal grouping. The work acknowledges Tippett's past with quotations from ''The Midsummer Marriage''.<ref>Gloag, "Tippett and the Concerto", pp. 186–188</ref>
{{Quote box|width=280px|bgcolor=#E0E6F8|align=right|quote= "If this is, perhaps, a music which claims a momentary exemption from modernist prohibitions and complex argument, it is also an intensely personal affirmation of a humanism that will not be extinguished".|salign = right |source= David Clarke, on Tippett's late works.<ref name= grove/>}} 
Tippett described the longest and most ambitious of his late works, the oratorio ''The Mask of Time'' (1982), as "a pageant of sorts with an ultimately lofty message".<ref>Tippett and Bowen, p. 246</ref> Mellers called the work "a mind-boggling cosmic history of the universe".<ref>Mellers, p. 199</ref> Paul Driver, who had been a critic of Tippett's new style, wrote that the ''Mask'' revealed "the authentic early Tippett", with a return to the lyricism of ''The Midsummer Marriage'' and multiple acknowledgements of his early compositions.<ref>{{cite journal|last= Driver|first= Paul|title= First Performances: "The Mask of Time"|journal=[[Tempo (journal)|Tempo]]|series=New Series|volume= 149|date= June 1984|pages=39–44|jstor= 945085}} {{subscription}}</ref>

Tippett had intended ''The Ice Break'' to be his final opera, but in 1985 he began work on ''[[New Year (opera)|New Year]]''. Bowen saw this work as a summary of ideas and images that had attracted Tippett throughout his working life.<ref>Bowen, quoted in Gloag, "Tippett's operatic world", p. 260</ref> Donal Henahan was dismissive of the music: "the score generally natters along in the numbing, not-quite-atonal but antimelodic style familiar from other Tippett works."<ref name= Donal/> In ''Byzantium'' (1990), Tippett set the five stanzas of [[W. B. Yeats]]'s poem, with added orchestral interludes. By this time he was professing little interest in his own work beyond its creation; performance and reception had become irrelevant to him. In 1996 he told an interviewer: "I'm outside the music I've made, I have no interest in it".<ref>Schuttenhelm, p. 116</ref><ref>Tippett and Bowen, p. 106</ref> After the String Quartet No. 5 (1991), which connects thematically with earlier works,<ref>Jones, p. 222</ref> Tippett closed his main output with ''The Rose Lake'' (1993), described in Tippett's ''Daily Telegraph'' obituary as "of luminous beauty ... a worthy ending to a remarkable career".<ref>{{cite news|title= Obituary: Sir Michael Tippett, OM|url= https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/music-obituaries/6916569/Sir-Michael-Tippett-OM.html|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110307053533/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/music-obituaries/6916569/Sir-Michael-Tippett-OM.html|url-status= dead|archive-date= 7 March 2011|newspaper= The Daily Telegraph|date= 10 January 1998|access-date= 16 June 2016}}</ref>