The Ice Break"

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UniversiV M icrd n lm s International 300 N. ZEES RD„ ANN ARBOR, Ml 48106

8214064

Vaughn, Beverly Jean

THE HOPE OF RECONCILIATION: A STYLISTIC CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR MICHAEL TIPPETT CULMINATING IN "THE ICE BREAK"

The Ohio State University D.M A. ÎS82

University Microfiims Internationei 300N.ZeebRoad.AnnAibor.MI48106

Copyright 1982 by Vaughn, Beverly Jean All Rights Reserved

THE HOPE OF RECONCILIATION: A STYLISTIC CHARACTERISTIC

OF SIR MICHAEL TIPPETT

CULMINATING IN

THE ICE BREAK

DOCUMENT

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Musical Arts in the Graduate

School of the Ohio State University

by

Beverly Jean Vaughn, B.A., M. Mus.

******

The Ohio State University

1982

Reading Committee: Approved by :

Professor Mario Alch Professor David Butler Professor Herbert Livingston Adviser School of Music This work is sincerely dedicated to my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Otis Vaughn, and to my adviser. Prof. Mario Alch.

11 VITA

July 17, 1950 ...... Born, Warren, Ohio

1 9 7 1 ...... Bachelor of Arts Degree Lorna Linda University Riverside, California

1972-74 Graduate Teaching Associate The Ohio State University Master of Music Degree

1974-79 ...... Professional studies and performances. New York, New York; Vienna, Austria; London, England; Graz, Austria; Boston, Massachu­ setts; Chicago, Illinois; Budapest, Hungary

1979-82 ...... Doctoral Studies in Music The Ohio State University

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Voice Performance

Studies in Applied Voice: Professor Mario Alch

Studies in Operatic Literature and Performance Practices Professor Mario Alch Professor Paul Hickfang Professor Roger Stephens

Studies in Vocal Pedagogy: Professor Helen Swank

Studies in German Art Song Literature and Diction: Professor Irma Cooper

Studies in French Art Song Literature and Diction: Professor John Muschick

111 Studies in Music History: Professor Keith Mixter Professor Herbert Livingston

Studies in Music Theory: Professor Burdette Green Professor David Butler

PERFORMANCES

RECITAL I

BEVERLY VAUGHN, mezzo-soprano Graduating Recital Series, 1973-74, Tuesday, April 2, 1974. 8:00 p.m. Hughes Auditorium

LINDA PHILLIPS, piano

Supervised by: Professor Mario Alch

Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Musical Arts.

"An Evening of Spanish Art Songs"

PROGRAM

Siete Canciones Populares Espanolas MANUEL DE FALLA El Pano Moruno Sequidilla Murciana Asturiana Jota Nana , Cancion Polo

II

"Llorad, Corazon, Que Teneis Razon GRANADOS from Canciones^ Amatorias y, "Mira Que Soy Nina, ' ^o r , Dejame!" GRANADOS from Canciones Amatorias "No Lloreis, Ojuelos" ...... GRANADOS from Canciones Amatorias "Iban al p i n a r " ...... GRANADOS from Canciones Amatorias

III

"Chevere" ...... MONTSALVATGE from Cinco Canciones Negras "Cancion para cunar a un Negrito" ...... MONTSALVATGE from Cinco Canciones Negras "Canto Negro"...... MONTSALVATGE from Cinco Canciones Negras

INTERMISSION

IV

"Florinda's Monologue" ...... GINASTERA from Don Rodrigo

V

Farruca ...... TURINA

"La Zagala Alegre" ...... TOLDRA from Seis Canciones "Madre, unos ojuelos vi" ...... TOLDRA from Seis Canciones

La Virgen Va Caminando ...... PALAU

Pano Murciano ...... NIN

El V i t o ...... NIN

Del Cabello Mas Sutil ...... OBRADORS

Chiquitita La Novia ...... OBRADORS Recital 2

Major role in Operatic Performance: "Hannah" in The Ice Break of Sir Michael Tippett, world premiere at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London, England, July 7, 1977, with Colin Davis conducting and Sam Wanamaker, producer.

Presented in partial fulfillment of the require­ ments for the Degree Doctor of Musical Arts.

Cast List

L e v ...... John Shirley-Quirk

Nadia ...... Heather Harper

Y u r i ...... Tom McDonnell

Gayle ...... Josephine Barstow

Olympion ...... Clyde Walker

Hannah ...... Beverly Vaughn

L u k e ...... John Dobson

Astron ...... Anne Wilkens James Bowman

Lieutenant of Police ...... Roderick Kennedy

Members of the Chorus and Orchestra for the Royal Opera House

Conductor: Colin Davis Producer: Sam Wanamaker Sets & Costumes: Ralph Koltai Choreography: Walter Raines Lighting: David Hersey

VI THREE SAMPLES OF REVIEWS FOR THE WORLD PREMIERE OF THE ICE BREAK. July 7, 1977.

From The Times (London), July 8, 1977:

One of the characters in Sir Michael Tippett's opera, The Ice Break, first performed last night in

London's Royal Opera House which commissioned it, is

Olympion, styled "a black champion". Those of us who sometimes tire of contemporary opera's continuing dependence on aged myths and remote historical themes can only be thankful for Tippett, three of whose four operas treat eternally topical ideas in a contemporary context. A champion he is indeed, most clearly in The Ice Break. It takes place now, maybe tomorrow, and boldly discusses the burning topics of last week and next week seriously, movingly, with an ultimate resolution of a positive but not optimistic nature. The last words are said to be translated from Goethe: "Yet you will always be brought forth again, glorious image of God, and likewise be maimed, wounded afresh, from within or without". It would not be a surprise if Tippett had derived the basic theme from an antique myth (The Odyssey, Jesus's parable of the Prodigal Son?). The modern setting remains appropriate.

vii The Ice Break takes up and further develops a theme from The Knot Garden, Tippett's third opera, the reconciliation of mutually exclusive types. There they were individualized: black and white, heterosexual and homosexual, aggressive and shy. The Ice Break centres on an ugly race riot between black and white, but its fundamental theme is the quest for a personal identity reconcilable with each individual's j^mily, friends, contemporaries, and other larger groups which constitute human society. The popular mass is an enemy which each must conquer for himself.

At the beginning Yuri, Russian-born but American- bred, has come with his mother to meet his father who is arriving after years of imprisonment in their native land. Yuri is American by temperament but unacceptably moody and intransigent with his American coevals as well as his generation-gapped parents.

The opera shows how, through physical suffering, he is brought to accept and embrace his foreign father, as a parent, a representative of another generation, another country and another, non-aggressive set of ethics. In the last scene also Yuri is slapped down discreetly by his black hospital nurse for humorously adopting the black jargon which formerly he, and now she rejects as superficial.

Vlll The sacrifice which effects this reconciliation involves the death of Yuri's mother, who falls into a romantic decline, fearing that her son may not survive his mugging, of his sweetheart who hankered impetuously for racial unity, really because she found it hip and fashionable, and of the black pop-idol ( a sort of Muhammed

All) who was the nurse's lover.

The tension of groups and of individuals is cannily exposed and made to explode in a libretto which is

Tippett's finest, most cogent. The diction is highly personal, as always: there are vogue-phrases and quotations from other, earlier authors, also much stilted language which is Tippett's telegram-diction for instant understanding and convenient musical setting (e.g., "My man flies", rather than "is flying", the more natural). Those who know Tippett's three earlier operas must find The Ice

Break more concentrated, more truthful, more instantly probing. The relatively short duration of each act (there are three), mentioned by PHS Diary of late, is quite irrelevant. Whenever the curtain falls the spectator has ingested enough for contemplation during the interval, and afterwards.

As always in a Tippett opera (King Priam begins to appear the rogue of the four, untypical in so many ways.

IX though otherwise consistent in pattern) there is much to disturb, surprise or confuse and then ponder over.

The first cast brought forth Heather Harper's fearful, regretful refugee mother, superbly voiced in longing and resignation, seemingly dwarfed by Nadia's shyness in the new country; John Shirley-Quirk's shambling but spiritually strong ex-convict; Josephine Barstow's wildly enthusiastic teenager (what a versatile singing-actress!) and Tom

McDonnell's tensely glowering Yuri, as well as the lovely mezzo, Beverly Vaughn, who made very much of Hannah's enlightened anti-racism and of her lovely solo in the second act (perhaps the highlight of the work). Clyde

Walker brought more personality than vocal prowess to

Olympion, and may not yet have completely transformed from baritone to tenor. John Dobson's Doctor was a pleasure to see and hear.

The hero of the first performance was surely Colin

Davis, to whom the opera is dedicated (thanksgiving for years of revelatory Tippett readings), and who lead the house's orchestra, and those on stage, through an exceptionally sturdy, confident, and sensitive premier musical rendition. Tippett is no Wagner: he places the statue on stage, gloriously, the pedestal in the orchestra, no less gloriously.

The score of The Ice Break will repay cracking over the years. Already the exquisitely mercurial woodwind writing, the filgree for electric guitars, the rich and

deeply sonorous string music (some memories of the third

symphony) stir the ears and the soul in new contexts.

The darkly looming theme of the cracking ice was, each

time, momentous to hear. I long to hear this stirring,

paining, interrogating, always compelling music many

times and as soon as possible. As with Henze's Bassarids

in 1966, so with Tippett's The Ice Break in 1977, opera

lives and rules. OK.?

William Mann

From the Sunday Times (London), July 10, 1977:

"Tippett: a composer for our time"

No doubt there were many among the crowded and

welcoming audience at Covent Garden on Thursday who found

Sir Michael Tippett's fourth and professedly final opera.

The Ice Break, disconcerting or puzzling; his major works,

especially those for the stage, have always had their strange side. But the sustained warmth of the reception seemed to reflect, besides the public's affection for a

favorite and endearing character, a strong emotion aroused by the work itself, not indeed in every detail, but in

its general impact.

Against much opposition, Tippett has always insisted on writing his own librettos; and since I have had, and retain, reservations about all of them it may seem perverse of me to find that of The Ice Break, for all its quirks

xi and oddities, the best of the series. But I do. It has

a powerful immediacy of subject and a corresponding

brevity and directness of treatment. It deals with the

conflicts that convulse our modern world: race hatred,

the mutual incomprehension of young and old, the denial

of human personality when individuals merge into a slogan-

canting mob— but also with the warmth and humanity that

continually struggle to reassert their ancient, healing

power.

The opera begins in that most characteristically

modern of locations, a big airport, and ends in a hospital

ward. Though Tippett does not want to particularize, or

to write a political treatise, the scene cannot be imagined

as anywhere but America, whither Lev, evidently a Russian

dissident who has been released after serving twenty

years in a prison camp, travels to join his wife, Nadia,

and their son, Yuri. Yuri is an awkward case: a stranger

in the immigrant family, who feels no sympathy for the world of his parents, yet cannot wholly integrate with

that of his American contemporaries either.

Most of these, including his girl-friend Gayle, are caught up among the adoring fans of a glamorous black athlete known as Olympion. The mob violence that simmers in Act 1 and erupts in Act 2 is aroused by Gayle's provo­ catively offering herself as a gesture of racial atonement to this black hero. Olympion*s own girl, the nurse Hannah,

xii gradually emerges as the deepest and most human of all the younger people, and her long and moving aria in Act 2 forms the still centre of this short, concise, rightly textured score.

By the end of the action, Nadia has faded away in a peaceful death, Olympion and Gayle have been killed in a street riot, and the severely injured Yuri is restored to health, and to a new sense of kinship with his bereaved father, by the evidently symbolical cutting away of the stiffly encasing plaster from his body. If this can be called a victory for humanity, it is no more than a partial and muted one: optimistic in tendency, but wary and weary in tone.

Nadia's visionary charcter, for example, is expressed in music that soars aloft in brief, recurrent phrases and often breaks into a surprising profusion of trills; her

"swan-song" aria as she feels the approach of death is no threnody, but a glittering reminiscence of the sleigh rides and shared gaiety of her childhood, in which the vocal line with its clarinet support or decoration gently glides below rapid scale-passages and crystalline arabesques in high wind, piano, electric organ and glockenspiel: a wonderful tapestry of sound. Briefer, and again very beautiful, is the love scene between the two black principals in Act 2; little though we know about either of them, we feel fully convinced at this point of the reality of their mutual passion.

xiii Not all the vocal writing is equally effective. At the start of Act 2, Tippett writes a quartet for his

Russian family and Gayle, which is intended to show them

"each in their private world" and does so all too well.

In that neither the words nor the music of any of them registers on the listener. Nor, for all his operatic experience, has Tippett mastered the art of setting simple phrases so that they reach us with the natural rise and fall of speech: for example, questions are sometimes set to a falling instead of a rising line. In general, he shows himself happier in writing for women than for men.

Lev's big solo in Act 3 is markedly less telling than

Nadia's swan-song which it immediately precedes, and

Olympion's boasting assertions of his virility and beauty are set to those whirling vocal flourishes that really suit the rapt Saint Augustine or W. H. Hudson's recollec­ tion of his boyish ecstasies on the Argentine pampas better than this cool cat.

In a performance that did immense credit to the

Royal Opera, to its orchestra and to Colin Davis (to whom the score is dedicated), Clyde Walker could not help making Olympion more of a campus guru than a budding

Muhammad Ali. John Shirley-Quirk's inability to make

Lev's voice-line stand away from its dark-hued orchestral surroundings was probably not his fault; his portrait of the character was beautifully observed and presented.

xiv Tom McDonnell's convincingly saturnine Yuri contrasted well with Josephine Barstow's brilliantly impulsive Gayle; but of the half-dozen principals, easily the most impressive were Heather Harper's tired, yet always loving and hopeful,

Nadia and the beautifully acted and sung Hannah of a firm­ voiced young American mezzo named Beverly Vaughn, who at once conquered the house.

Although it was rumored that Ralph Koltai was dis­ pleased with the management's realization of his designs, they served very well for Sam Wanamaker's vivid and gripping production, which in turn loyally seconded the poet-composer's strange, idiosyncratic, disturbing vision of a world in turmoil. An imperfect opera, maybe; but worth a dozen of the meretricious novelties by Ginastera and Henze that have lately served to extend our acquain­ tance with modern opera.

------Desmond Shawe-Taylor

From the Daily Express (London), July 9, 1977:

"Cracking stuff from Tippett"

Racial violer ce as a modern background to family tension is the provocative theme of The Ice Break. Sir

Michael Tippett's fourth opera, premiered at Covent

Garden.

The 72-year-old composer has again written his own libretto, featuring such characters as a man returned from

XV 20 years as a political prisoner, his moody student son and a black pop idol.

Tippett's music, conducted by Colin Davis, is rich in expressive character and instrumental colour, though still apt at times to clog the words when more than one character is singing at once.

Sam Wanamaker's production, in glistening slideaway sets by Ralph Koltai, contrives some dramatic scenes of mob hysteria at an airport and on a street, but a psyche­ delic "trip" with laser beams and an astral voice is less successful. But there are several fine solo performances- notably John Shirley-Quirk as the returned prisoner, Tom

McDonnell as his son, and a new black American mezzo,

Beverly Vaughn, richly eloquent as Hannah the nurse.

------Noel Goodwin

XVI Recital 3

BEVERLY VAUGHN, mezzo-soprano Graduating Recital Series, 1981-82, Tuesday, October 2, 1981, 8:00 p.m. Hughes Audi­ torium

PAUL STROUSE, piano

Supervised by: Professor Mario Alch

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Musical Arts.

PROGRAM

Stabat Mater ...... Antonio Vivaldi

Largo Adagio Allegretto Largo Lento

II

Vier Ernste Gesange ...... Johannes Brahms

Denn es gehet dem Menschen Ich wandte raich 0 Tod, wie bitter bist du Wenn ich mit Menschen und mit Engelszungen redete

INTERMISSION

III

The Resurrection...... Ned Rorera

xvii IV

Tonadillas ...... Enrique Granados

La Waja de Goya El Majo fee El tra la la y el punteado El majo timido ^ La Maja dolorosa, 1 La Maja dolorosa, Num. 2 La Maja dolorosa, Nuin. 3 El mirar de la maja Amor y Odio El Majo Olvidado Callejeo

Recital 4

BEVERLY VAUGHN, mezzo-soprano Graduating Recital Series, 1981-82, Sunday, February 14, 1982, 3:00 p.m. Hughes Audi- PAUL STROUSE, piano toriun

Assisted by PAUL LAIRD, cello

Supervised by: Professor Mario Alch

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Musical Arts.

Program

"An Introduction to Art Songs of Black American Women Composers"

N i g h t ...... Florence Price Song to the Dark Virgin

XVlll II

Dream Portraits Margaret Bonds Dream Variations I , too Minstrel

III

Dawn Betty Jackson King In the Springtime Betty Jackson King Love, Let the Wind C r y Undine Moore

INTERMISSION

IV

Tribute to Roland Hayes ...... Kathleen Evelyn Deloache The Twenty-third Psalm The Lord's Prayer

V

No I m a g e s ...... Dorothy Rudd Moore Dream Variations From the Dark Tower

from From the Dark Tower

XIX TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

DEDICATION ...... ii

VITA ...... iii

PROGRAMS AND REVIEWS ...... iv

PREFACE ...... xxi

Chapter

I . THE PRECURSORS OF THE ICE BREAK .... 1

"A Child of Our T i m e " ...... 2 The Midsummer Marriage ...... 9 King P r i a m ...... 21 The Knot G a r d e n ...... 30

II. THE ICE B R E A K ...... 40

B a c k g r o u n d ...... 40 S y n o p s i s ...... 42 L e v ...... 45 N a d i a ...... 52 Y u r i ...... 55 Gayle and Olympion ...... 56 H a n n a h ...... 60 The m o b ...... 63

III. S U M M A R Y ...... 67

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 69

XX PREFACE

Since the dawn of mankind, the human race has been

faced with social and political problems begging for re­

conciliation. Historically, many artists have uncompro­

misingly responded to this plea with their gifts. Our

20th century Western civilization, for example, provides

us with manifold examples of artists who, in their own way, sought to depict these problems and, in most cases,

if not directly offering a reconciliatory solution, at

least sought to jar the public consciousness into reflec­

tive thinking. Some, Like Picasso, chose to denounce

human atrocities through the canvas. Others, such as

Solzhenitsyn, James Baldwin or Ralph Ellison, bemoaned,

chided and prodded us through literature. T. S. Eliot

and Nikki Giovanni stirred us poetically, while playwrights

such as Tennessee Williams and Lorraine Hansberry sought

to awaken our latent social sensibilities from the dramatic

stage.

Music has not been reluctant to address nagging

conflicts and explore the precarious vicissitudes of man's

life. This is particularly true in opera where composers

XXI from Mozart (i.e., "Le Noz:e dl Figaro") to Moussorsky

(i.e., "Boris Godunov") to Kurt Weill (i.e., "The Rise and

Fall of the Mahagony") have adeptly addressed or satirized

social perplexities of their day.

In this century, the theme of reconciliation in spite

of seemingly insoluble confrontations pervades the works of

one of opera's most original and uncompromising present-day

composers, Sir Michael Kemp Tippett (born 1905). Indeed,

the first of his compositions to bring Tippett to interna­

tional prominence, the oratorio A Child of Our Time which was premiered in 1944, addressed one of the most compelling social issues of the late 1930's with such impassioned

fervor that it is considered to be one of the greatest musical denouncements of the gestation and horrors of war and its ramifications. Yet, even amid the social negativism which inspired the oratorio's origin, a feeling of compassion and eventual reconciliation permeate the work. The feeling of reconcilitory hope would become a stylistic characteristic of other Tippett compositions subsequent to the oratorio's premiere. This is particularly true of his four major operas— The Midsummer Marriage (1952), King Priam (1961),

The Knot Garden (1970), and The Ice Break (1976).

In each of the operas, Tippett endeavors to empatheti- cally examine the divisive aspects of social relationships within the context of possible reconciliation. That which makes the critical analysis of The Ice Break particularly

xxii CHAPTER I

THE PRECURSORS OF THE ICE BREAK

Michael Tippett's oratorio and three major operas previous to The Ice Break provide us with engrossing background material. One of the most interesting aspects of Tippett's dramatic work for the musical stage is that he functions, in the majority of cases as both composer and librettist. Tippett first served in this dual capacity during the composition of A Child of Our Time where, upon the advice of the noted playwright, T. S.

Eliot, who was his initial choice as librettist for the oratorio, Tippett used his elaborate sketch notes as the basis for the resultant libretto.! The over­ whelming success and personal satisfaction of this enter­ prise was the impetus for his subsequent undertakings as the combined composer-librettist of his four major operas.

^Eric Walter White, Tippett and his Operas (London: Barrie and Jenkins, Ltd., 1979), p. 40. A CHILD OF OUR TIME

A Child of Our Time was born, in great part, out of

Tippett's ardent pacifism of the pre-World War II era.

By 1938, he realized

...that he had no useful role to play as a political activist; he was an artist, and the compassion he felt for the per­ secuted and oppressed, particularly those in Eastern Europe whose countries were being overrun by Hitler, people in the main overlooked by the radicals of the time (whose chief concern was the Spanish Civil War) as well as the establishment— this compassion could best be expressed by means of his art, in a musical work.2

The crucial impetus for the actualization of these

sentiments came with the 1938 assassination of the Nazi diplomat, von Rath, in Paris by the desperate Polish

Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynsban. Grynsban would become the symbolic hero of the Tippett masterpiece in which the tripartite shape of the Messiah, the scheme of the Lutheran

Passions and the poignant universalisra of the Negro spiritual are combined. This is a work which "...records and reflects the common experiences of ordinary people rather than (though these are, of course, an integral part) Tippett's own personal experience and feelings."3

^David Matthews, Michael Tippett: An Introductory Study (London: Faber & Faber, 1980), p. 31.

3 l b i d . . p. 32. 3

The first third of the oratorio was, as Tippett writes: "...to set the mood of d e s c e n t . "4 As if to underline the characteristic general state of oppression prevalent during the time, the chorus solemnly intones at

the opening of the oratorio:

"The world turns on its dark side. It is winter."5

Throughout this section, Tippett conceived of the chorus as mankind in general who feels a sense of alienation and hopelessness before the merging tide of world events. The soloists themselves represent the dichotomies felt between

"...instinct and oppressed circumstances";® "...the division

in the individual and general psyche";? and the "...loss of

relationship with the soul to the impersonal things."® This

loss causes the boy (or "child of our time") to have, among

other things, such an apparent infantile fixation on the

feminine anima that his entire concept of womanhood is

perverted and ambivalent.® The section closes with the

^Michael Tippett, Music of the Angels: Essays and Sketchbooks of Michael Tippett (London: Eulenberg Books, 1980), p. 128.

5 Ibid., p. 129.

® Ibid., p. 140.

? Ibid., p. 134.

® Ibid., p. 138.

®Ibid. spiritual "Steal Away"— Tippett's "...modern musical symbol"10 which suggests the individual's need to escape oppressing reality.

The second part is the unfolding of the drama. (The title, "A Child of Our Time", was taken from a story written by Odon van Horvath, 1901-1938, on corollary subject material.)11 In this section, Tippett uses the dramatic chorus for exclamatory purposes in much the same way Bach utilized the chorus in his Passion music. As the section progresses, Tippett symbolically employs the spirituals

"Nobody knows de trouble I see" to describe the boy's

"...anguish of mind and the general contemporary anguish of s o u l "12 and "Go down, Moses" to express his anger.

The tenor soloist— the "boy"— struggles to contend with the co-existing external and internal prisons of law and circumstance. Meanwhile, the alto soloist becomes the

"anima" whose province it is "...to observe the compulsive movements of the alter e g o . "12 The task of the bass soloist in this section is to become a compassionate narrator while the soprano soloist continues as the wretched mother vainly

10Ibid., p. 142.

lllbid.. p. 144.

12lbid.. p. 158.

ISlbid.. p. 160. 5

reaching out to her elusive, troubled son. Tippett ends

Part II with "0, by an' by", a spiritual which, as he writes

in his extensive sketch notes:

"...describes the common human need for some spiritual certainty, for 'peace'. The way through is only dimly felt, not as yet understood. In fact, only the awareness of the deep need and sometimes only from the unconscious, while the conscious mind persists along outworn political cliches, etc."

It is in Part III that Tippett finally allows us to consider the moral, if any, which may be drawn. The chorus opens this section by singing:

"The cold deepens. The earth descends into the icy waters, where lies the jewel of great price."15

Tippett understood this descent into water as a Jungian universal dream symbol of the present d a y . 16

"...Den Weg des Wassers der immer nach unten geht, muss man wohl gehen; wenn man den Schatz das kostlose Erbe des Vaters, wieder heben will."l?

The section continues with a final exploration of the problems evolving out of a creative impulse which is beyond the scope of good and evil. These problems are accompanied

14lbid.. p. 176.

15Ibid.. p. 179.

IGlbid., p. 178.

ITlbid. ("...We must surely go the way of the waters, which always tend downward, if we would raise up the treasure, the precious heritage of the father.") 6

by two acrimonious paradoxes. The first arises from the

"man of destiny" (in this case, Hitler) reaching for the

power of God but manifesting the projections of Satan. The

second is an even more perplexing paradox which might be

said to have emerged from Tippett's personal pacifism,

namely "...patience is in voluntary withdrawal."1&

The oratorio ends, however, on a note of muted optimism

and hope as in the penultimate tutti ensemble the soloists

and chorus marvel that now "...it is spring"— a time of

rebirth and fresh beginnings. This leads to the work's

closing spiritual, "Deep River", which is a representation

of the generalized expression of the inevitable hope of reconciliation.

Although the overall form and use of musical devices

(i.e., recitatives, arias, choruses, etc.) are straight­ forward, the fundamental reasons for the oratorio's effectiveness are perhaps not so easily delineated. True, the musical score and libretto are both unrelentingly impassioned and technically not easy. However, this analytical difficulty might perhaps be more attributed to the underlining passion Tippett felt for both the self- righteous and the rejected which pervades the score. Such passion is merely reflective of yet another seemingly incomprehensible paradox in which humanity embraces

ISibid.. p. 182 7 simultaneously the best of God and the worst of Satan.

Tippett himself writes:

"This passion, in all senses of the word, springs from the archetypal nature of the drama as the oratorio presents it. When the chorus asks:

'What of the boy, then, what of him?'

"They are answered by ------

'He, too, is outcast, his manhood broken in the clash of powers. God overpowered him, the child of our time.'

"This answer is terrible; but the use of the word God is in no way inappro­ priate. We grope our way towards com­ passion and understanding, because the shock of the collective tragedy is so great each time any part of the arche­ typal drama of violence and division is re-enacted."19

Upon the advice of conductor Walter Goehr, the oratorio

was set aside for the time being following its completion

in 1943.20 However, Benjamin Britten, after an initial

hearing, enthusiastically urged Tippett to arrange its

March 19, 1944 premiere with Goehr conducting. Although

the oratorio received considerable attention— some critics

felt Tippett's deliberate melange of sophisticated and

ISlbid.. p. 196.

20lan Kemp, Michael Tippett: A Symposium on his 60th Birthday, ed., (London: Faber & Faber, 1965), p. 21. 8 popular music produced a certain dichotomy in the musical score^l— it was not until the success of subsequent European performances during the several years that followed the premiere that the full impact of the powerfully evocative music was felt and appreciated.

21white, p. 42. THE MIDSUMMER MARRIAGE

The success of A Child of Our Time and the conclusion

of the war afforded Tippett the opportunity to initiate a

long cherished project, namely, the composition of a full-

scale opera. Work was begun about 1946 on an opera in

which Tippett felt

...free to make use of the findings of anthropology, and deep psychology to help him express his themes. The setting was chosen as a place where the natural and the supernatural could 'naturally' meet and interact, rather in the spirit of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The manners and costumes of the 'natural' world were to be present; and the mani­ festations of the supernatural world (i.e., the Ancients and the young dancer Strephon) were to be related to ancient Greek modes. With the aid of this appa­ ratus he reckoned he could assimilate the visionary as well as the realistic and satirical elements in his action, just as Mozart had succeeded in doing more or less the same thing in The Magic Flute.22

David Matthews, in his book entitled Michael Tippett :

An Introductory Study, suggests that perhaps the most salient inspiration in the composition of The M id s u m m e r

Marriage was directly related to the composer's great admiration for Jungian psychology and, in particular, his concept of "the process of individuation."23 (During

22Ibid., pp. 45-46.

23Matthews, p. 46. 10

the composition of A Child of our Time, Tippett underwent

a brief period of Jungian self-analysis.)

Briefly, Dr. Jung's "process of individuation" evolved

from the hypothesis that our dreams— themselves part of the

"...one great web of psychological factors"24— seem to

follow a certain meandering pattern in which individual

characteristics and tendencies are momentarily visible,

disappear and then reappear. As the individual becomes

more cognizant of the overall arrangement or design of

these dreams, an undeniable directing process is observable

at work and almost imperceptible psychic growth is generated.

M. L. von Franz, an eminent Jungian disciple, asserts that

"...gradually a wider and more mature personality emerges, and by degrees becomes effective and even visible to others."25 Jung called the center of this psychic growth

"Self" which represented the totality of the whole psyche.26

The actual "process of individuation" is the conscious coming to terms with one's own inner center (psychic nucleus) or Self to which the cognizance and value of recognition of dream patterns provides the venue.

According to von Franz, this process generally begins

24carl C. Jung, Man and his Symbols (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1979 ed.), p. 160.

25ibid.

26ibid. 11 with a wounding of the personality and the accompanying shock, trauma and/or suffering (i.e., a child's first day at school or a sudden, unexpected insult or abuse).

Inward, suffocating boredom may also serve as a catalyst.

The psychic nucleus or Self casts ensuing darkness over that and any future time which can only be combated by what is termed a "realization of the shadow"— a re-adapting of the conscious to the unconscious in which dreams can be a major force in acquainting the individual with unpleasant characteristics of personality that perhaps have not been effectively grappled with. Often, however, another "inner figure" emerges after the initial shock.

It was undoubtedly this concept of "inner figures" which

David Matthews believes so influenced Tippett in the composition of The Midsummer Marriage— an influence which, by the way, can be observed permeating all Michael

Tippett's large-scale vocal works.

These figures are termed the "anima" and the "animus".

The anima is a "...personification of all feminine psychological tendencies in a man's psyche, such as vague feelings and moods, prophetic hunches, receptiveness to the irrational, capacity for personal love, feeling for nature, and last but not least his relation to the unconscious.27 The anima most frequently manifests itself

2 7 i b i d . . p. 177. 12 as erotic fantasy or as the impetus causing a man to fall passionately in love at first sight. On the other hand,

the anima can be considered responsible for a man's ability to find the right marriage partner and is indispensable to his appreciation for and development of right values and inner truth. Not surprisingly, Jung maintains that the character of the anima is shaped by

the man's mother or perceived mother-image.^S The animus or the personification of masculinity emergent in women is, in turn, allegedly shaped by her father-image. It can be represented, for example, either in the form of a hidden, "sacred" conviction or as a cocoon of dreamy thoughts which isolate the woman from reality or arouse secretly destructive attitudes or obsessive possessive­ ness. 29 There are, however, more positive ramifications

that can be attributed to the animus which are represented, among other things, in "...an enterprising spirit, courage, truthfulness, and in the highest form, spiritual profundity. Through him a woman can experience the underlying processes of her cultural and personal objec­ tive situation, and find her way to an intensified spiri­

tual attitude to life."20

28lbid.. p. 189.

29lbid.. pp. 190-191. 13

David Matthews may indeed be correct in his assertion

of the importance of Tippett’s Jungian influence in The

Midsummer Marriage for there are many corrollaries between

Jung's "process of individuation" and character development

in the opera. For example, the opera’s two couples who

are to marry at midsummer (the time once believed to

represent the climax of the year) each undergo levels of

psychologically-oriented experiences during which deeper

insight, self-knowledge and maturation are gained. The

first couple, Mark and Jennifer (a 20th-century Tamino

and Pamina) are more complex than Jack and Bella (whose

18th-century antecedents are Papageno and Papagena.)

Consequently, the ordeals suffered by Jennifer and Mark are of a higher, more spiritual realm than those of the second couple. Jennifer is the daughter of the powerful but ruthless King Fisher, a businessman bitterly opposed to her proposed marital union with Mark whose background is unknown and mysterious. Although Jennifer and Mark had planned to elope before the curtain rises on Act 1, at their scheduled rendezvous on their wedding day the ebullient Mark is bitterly disappointed upon learning that Jennifer has apparently changed her mind about the impending marriage. Asserting that although she has left home for good, Jennifer— guided by the impetus of her animus— feels lead to proclaim: 14 i s L - f t I 31 X + w ‘ /ut lotit—'X hdt ~7rdth,

Seeing a flight of broken stairs on the hilltop, she climbs them and disappears from view ascending to her

"paradise." Mark, on the other hand, is deeply grieved and decides to enter the nearby gates which lead to a cave below. He cries resolutely: P Î E Pex her Hie, li^Hr j — /n& — H>e

U f 32 ^ Ctrki r -to erH’t / ' cfetJ 6k tcelüt)

These gates, which open to the bowels of the earth, represent the venue through which Mark passes in a quest which will bring him to terms with the ramifications of his anima. The earth is representative of the mother- image and by the opera's end, we are able to surmise from

S^Michael Tippett, The Midsummer Marriage (London: Schott & Co., Ltd., 195431 Ï1 |31a| -5. pp. 40-41.

32lbid.. I |39a| + 3, pp. 54-55. 15

the psychologically stronger Mark who re-emerges that the experiences and insight gained therein have vindicated the necessity of his initial disappointment.

Before the completion of Act I, both Mark and Jennifer return to describe and defend their respective experiences before the Ancients— the priest and priestess of the

Temple around which the action takes place who guard the mystic sphere of the couple’s transformation.33 Encouraged by the obvious delight and wonderment of the female chorus members, Jennifer rapturously sings of her experience:

"Sweet was the peace, joyful the calm. Strong was the light, cleansing the air. Then, then, then the congregation of the stars began to dance while I, I in pure delight saw how my soul flower'd at the sight, and leaving the body, forward ran to dance as w e l l . "34

If Jennifer's experiences appear mystically ethereal, those which Mark next defends are contrastingly sensual and earthy. His music is robust and laced with a biting edge of rancor. Part of Mark's text reads:

"As stallions stamping the young men dance to the springing sap and the leap­ ing life. We force our feet through the great grass and tear the boughs from the bending trees that hold the sun from the glorious bed, where she lying through the winter slept, till pricked awake by our d e s i r e . " 3 5

33uatthews, p. 47.

34Tippett, The Midsummer Marriage. I, | ^ | + 4, pp. 122-125.

35ibid.. I, llïl , 135-137. 16

The text becomes more forceful as Mark continues:

"As stallions stamping the young men dance to the springing sap and the leaping life. The ewe is torn by our willing hands. The child trod by our frenzied feet, that beat, the beat of life inflamed by death."^6

This fervid emotion reaches its apex when Mark exclaims

P 1— 3 “1 _ ) ------3 Ï g

The^re, {fi /Vo twu— l’on) —

? m v t o — lOfO ff)ckr) ------ta'ifh bcA$t — — [fiAiti « » -)

The purging process, however, is not yet over for the young couple. To the chagrin of a flustered King

Fisher, whose name was chosen to "..evoke his worldly success (Tippett says that it is meant to be the same kind of name as Duke Ellington) and also brings to mind the Fisher King of the Grail legends, whose wound must be healed before his waste land becomes fertile again, though the connection is rather d i s t a n t ",38 Mark and Jennifer have not yet completed their "process of maturation."

Mark must now ascend into and experience Jennifer's

36ibid. . I, 1^1 + 1, 137-139.

37lbid.. |99| + 2, pp. 139-140.

38Matthews, p. 48. 17

"paradise" while Jennifer descends through the lower gates into the cave below. By the end of the opera upon their re-emergence in Act III, both young people have undergone a necessary psychological transformation of which individual harmony and wholeness are the fruits.

It is at this point their midsummer marriage becomes both inevitable and welcomed.

Jack and Bella, on the other hand, are motivated by more ordinary, commonplace influences and circumstances.

Bella is the more dominant, particularly in Act II where she takes advantage of an old leap year tradition to advise Jack;

M f -J y 39 S e fr, JSTvc.— m ’us i J » Bella's dominance is further evident in Act III when she convinces a reluctant Jack not to obey King Fisher's order to unmask Sosostris, the clairvoyante Fisher hired to discredit the Ancients. Eric Walter White writes:

"... It is Bella who seems that such a gesture is tantamount to sacrilege and urges her lover to break away from subserviance to a fascist master while there is still time."40

SSTippett, The Midsummer Marraige, II, I1 2 7 | -3, p. 168.

40ffhite, p. 73. 18

He further concludes, in writing of Bella's primary motiva­

tional force, that:

"all the way through, the motive power that drives her forward is biological; and at the moment of crisis she knows instinctively that the time has come 'for the unborn child to speak'."41

Since Bella's and Jack's experiences have been less complex

than those of Jennifer and Mark, their marriage is

celebrated at the end of the opera without much further

complication although, by his refusal to obey King Fisher's

command to shoot or unveil Sosostris, Jack does achieve a

new level of maturity.

King Fisher, the unflinching and cynical opponent to

the inevitable union of Mark with his daughter, is the only main character who does not enjoy an edifying

transformation experience. Thus, there is little surprise when he, in attempting to kill Mark in Act III, himself falls dead at Mark's glance. David Matthews calls this

"...obviously 'right' symbolically. It precipitates the fourth Ritual dance, of rebirth."42

The Ritual dances— three occur in Act II and the last in Act III— evoke an ambience of the supernatural as the dancers themselves assume the spirits of nature representative of earth in autumn; waters in winter; the

41ibid.

42Matthews, p. 47. 19

air in spring; and fire in summer. The first three are

dramas of pursuit in which, interestingly enough, the male

is pursued by the female with the implication that her

fulfillment causes his death. The fourth, occurring as a high point of Act III, draws the now completely transformed

Mark and Jennifer into its flames in a symbolic gesture of voluntary human sacrifice and eternal copulation.

Tippett felt that the ritual dances symbolized the series of trials which Mark and Jennifer undergo to achieve spiritual renewal.43

In commenting on the principal musical quality of

The Midsummer Marriage, William Mann writes that its chief overriding characteristic is:

"...an uplifted, visionary lyricism which exactly matches the dramatic theme, and pervades the action at numerous levels... Lyricism of this sort tends, with Tippett, to proliferate contrapuntally, and there are passages in the opera when the ears strain to catch all the melodious strands that are flying past; but closer acquain­ tance brings these into sensuous focus and shows that the music is less obscure than it may first a p p e a r . "44

The general tone of the music is "...intensely joyful, optimistic, life-affirming"45 standing out in pointed

43Tippett, Music of t h e Angels, p . 217

44lan Kemp, p. 126.

45Matthews, p. 52. 20 contrast to much of the post-war art which "...tended to reflect a sense of exhaustion and hopelessness. "46

The Midsummer Marriage would require seven arduous years of concentrated work before it was completed. On

January 27, 1955, it received its world premiere at The

Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. Although there was some appreciation for the innovative musical quality of the work, many critics found the libretto to be overly complex and dense which, when coupled with initial produc­ tion problems, detracted from the work's effectiveness.47

However, the 1968 Covent Garden revival under the baton of Colin Davis and direction of Ande Anderson provided the work with an unqualified triumph in which the full magnificence of the score and breath of psychological insight was finally brought to the forefront. Subsequent revivals at Covent Garden and triumphs in other established opera houses coupled with the 1970 Phillips recording of the complete opera which won the prestigious Grand Prix du Disque de 1*Académie Charles Gros in 1972 have vindicated the creative genius and prolific imagination which shimmer through the pages of the score.

46ibid.

47ibid. 21

KING PRIAM

With the completion of The Midsummer Marriage,

Michael Tippett was able to crystalize a burgeoning musical and dramatic language reflective of his own peculiar genius. Some consider this to be the most creative of his theatrical works— his masterpiece for stage— whose lyric influence can be felt in its three operatic successors, the most immediate of which was King

Priam.

In 1957, the Koussevitsky Foundation commissioned

Tippett to compose a work for chorus and orchestra— a project which inexorably developed into a full-scale opera. Tippett himself recalls at least two incidents which were directly related to the inception of material for King Priam: the methods dramatists such as Brecht and Claudel utilized in their selection of material to be used on the epic stage which only reflected their personal viewpoints and none others; and a feeling generated by the book Le Dieu cache by Lucien Goldmann that "...tragedy is both viable and r e w a r d i n g . 48

The actual stimulus to write a tragic opera came principally from conversations with Peter Brooks, a young

48Tippett, Music of the Angels. pp. 222-223. 22

producer at Covent Garden during the time, about which

Tippett writes:

"...(they) convinced me that for this new opera I need not invent all the story my­ self, as I had done in the opera The Mid­ summer Marriage; indeed that this would now be wrong. That appropriate traditional epic material, handled in a certain way, would provide the tragic story, to be played out upon the stage in the actual Present of an evening's performance, yet distanced by being in the Past, a theatrical practice which the Greek dramatists used in their time; as Shakespeare did in his: as Brecht and others have done in o u r s . "49

Tippett at last felt certain that the material

surrounding Priam, King of Troy, would suit his purposes ideally. These purposes, however, were not those concerned with a mere recital— whether real or legendary— of the causes of the Trojan War. Instead, the fundamental issues in King Priam are moral ones and the opera allows a fresh re-examination into "...the eternal problems of the human heart and human destiny."50

The plot— purged of materials not germane to Tippett's central theme or purpose— centers upon Priam who is married to Hecuba, "...the proud, violent, heroic, political q u e e n . ''51 o f the two sons born to this marriage.

Hector is the beloved and Paris is the rejected. Paris's

49ibid., p. 224.

SOlbid.. p. 225.

Sllbid.. p. 227. 23

rejection, however, is predicated upon a prophecy which

the Old Man, a local seer, declares in the crucial opening

scene:

"...this child, will cause as by an inexorable fate his father's death."5%

After the momentary shock, Hecuba— true to her arrogant

but resilient nature— unflinchingly cries:

"Then am I no longer mother to this child. Troy and the city's King are s a c r e d . . . "^3

She proclaims at the climax of her dramatic tour-de force:

(o

m : * p _ : J— f f n 1 H----- : = t m -

llarsk fin ' i f ts ^ —

li 54

It is Priam, however, who momentarily reflects over the bitter dichotomy felt by a king who is also a father. In the end, however, he, too, consents to the child's death.

S^Michael Tippett, King Priam (London: Schott & Co., Ltd., 1962), I, 1^1, p. 24.

53lbid.. I, 136 1, pp. 25-27.

54lbid., I, |40|, p. 28. 24

Many years later as Priam and Hector hunt in the fields, they chance upon a comely adolescent endowed with extraordinary prowess. To his amazement, Priam learns that this youth is his own Paris for it appears that the guard ordered to kill the baby gave him instead to a shepherd for safekeeping. Thus, for the second time in

Act I, King Priam is faced with an acrimonious choice.

Although he is mindful of the Old Man's ominous prophecy,

Priam allows his paternal compassion to mitigate his own survival instincts and allows Paris to return to Troy with him.

Paris, upon reaching maturity, scorns his father and sails to the Greek court of Menclaus, king of Sparta.

There his adulterous liason with Helen, Menclaus’s wife, and her eventual abduction to Troy provide the catalyst for war and the panorama in which other individual choices— inevitably painful— must be made. As if to underline the pervading importance of the question of choice to the overall fabric of King Priam, Tippett writes of this scene between Paris and Helen before the abduction:

"...it was tempting to include an operatic description of Paris's and Helen's inescapable, passionate, adulterous love in King Priam. But it did not belong to this opera. What did belong was the moral choice set before Paris, if choice there was. Knowing quite well what the consequences of the abduction would be, why did he choose to do it? Nor could he appeal for guidance to Helen. 25

I relieve Helen of all problems of choice, in this sense. She alone of all the characters in the opera has a true acceptance of herself. As she says, in answer to questions, with ultimate simplicity, 'I am Helen.'"55

Paris's choice, however, is apparently tested when he is confronted by three goddesses and asked to present his

favorite with a golden apple. The military prowess of

Athene is compared to Hera's security in marriage --- both of whom must compete with Paris's final choice.

Aphrodite, the goddess of love. In choosing Aphrodite,

Paris reaffirms his choice of Helen which "...illus­ trates clearly the point Tippett is trying to make, that the apparent dilemma of choice is illusory, since the chosen course is inevitable."56

Act II, scene 1 depicts the ensuing war in which

Patroclus, lover of Achilles, is killed in battle by

Hector. Achilles vows and executes a brutal revenge by murdering Hector. Amidst such horrible chaos, Andromache, wife of Hector, and Hecuba show themselves to be "... tragic heroine, both of them passionate and inflexible and neither of them able to understand the mysterious, numinous figure of H e l e n . "57

55

56Matthews, p. 66.

57ibid. 26

By Act III, we have watched Priam grow from a vigorous young king to a frail, old visionary who "...once he has accepted his death is able to transcend all human con­ cerns."58 What is even more interesting in this regard is an upsurge of humility in the old King Priam that permits him to beg the arrogant Achilles for the body of

Hector. Achilles, too, has assumed many guises during the opera (i.e., veteran longing for home, the pitiless avenger of Patroclus*s death, the war hero extraordi­ n a i r e . ) 59 This, however, does not stop him from being moved by Priam's ardent request. In one of the final scenes of the opera, the two warriors share a great scene of compassion as they both reflect upon their rapidly impending deaths. It is interesting to note the role of compassion in this a work so obsessed with the question of inevitable choice. Yet, perhaps such a sentiment is vital to the ebb and flow of choice for compassion might well be "...the only possible mitigating influence on the cruel course of history."50

Musically, King Priam stands in marked contrast to

The Midsummer Marriage. Ian Kemp has pointed out that

King Priam might be considered to be the realization of

58ibid.

59ibid.

GOibid. 27

germinating ideas in Tippett's 2nd Symphony, a work

composed shortly after The Midsummer Marriage which

evidenced a noticeable change of st y l e .61 David Matthews

cites three new aspects of Tippett's musical language

which become apparent in King Priam: the texture is

sparse, the music is non-developing, and it lacks a

traditional tonal base.62

First, in regard to the spareness of texture, Tippett does not use the luxurious countrapuntal technique which

some observers feel permeates the lush The Midsummer

Marriage score. Furthermore, there are no sweeping, euphoric arioso passages as the singing style is now more declamatory rather than lyrical. Tippett writes in this regard:

"...the monologues, which come every so often in the opera, perform the same formal tasks as do the monologues in Hamlet. They demanded for their musical expresion something nearer declamatory arioso passages than lyrical aria. Con­ sequently I have had to depart substan­ tially from the lyrical style of most of my music in the past and find a hard, tough declamatory style, that would reflect inevitability. It did not seem appropriate to let the voices float on a web of orches­ tral sound, as in many operas, but on the contrary to leave the vocal line free to make a kind of declamatory counterpoint

61Ian Kemp, "Tippett, Michael", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 6th ed., 20 vols., ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), XIX, p. 8.

62Matthews, pp. 67-68. 28

to the simplest necessary instrumental accompaniment— if accompaniment is the right term at a l l . "63

Thus, the orchestra is divided into small autonomous units. Through much of the score, the wind and brass instruments are emphasized, while it is felt that Tippett has often intentionally used the piano as a solo instrument to replace the s t r i n g s . 64

Second, Matthews as well as Ian Kemp find the music to be, for the most part, non-developing in that "...the scene of surging momentum is discarded in favour of a succession of sharply differentiated structural u n i t s . "65

However, as certain characters or incidents having particular kinds of music or repeated leitmotifs associated with them, a resultant homogenity or cohesiveness does emerge in overall work.

Third, Matthews feels that the music does not have the traditional tonal base as evidenced in earlier Tippett compositions. Ian Kemp again appears to concur in that he calls the harmony "...acid rather than euphonious. "66

63natthews, p. 67.

64%emp, "Tippett, Michael", loc. cit.

65ibid.

66ibid. 29

Matthews points out that Tippett has not allowed clear tonal progressions between sections— thus, the overall effect is non-tonal.67

Not only were the germination and development of King

Priam in marked contrast to its immediate predecessor, The

Midsummer Marriage, but its initial reception as well.

Whereas critics were generally baffled or confused at the premiere of The Midsummer Marriage, King Priam received almost universal acclaim. Following its premiere on May

29, 1962 with Forbes Robinson who scored a great personal success as King Priam at the Royal Opera in London, it was revived for their 1962-63 and 1966-67 seasons. Its first international production was given at the Badisches

Staattheater, Karlsruhe on Jan. 26, 1963 in a German translation by Walter Bergmann.

G^Matthews, p. 67. 30

THE KNOT GARDEN

For his third opera— the most immediate predecessor

of The Ice Break— Tippett decided to turn to issues of

the 1950's and 1960's for materials to construct another

private mythology.68

In his introduction to Moving into Aquarius, he had referred to his central preoccupation with the question of 'what sort of world we live in and how we may behave in it.' This pointed to the direction the new opera was to take.69

Between 1963 and 1965, Tippett worked intensively on

a libretto in which allusion as evidenced in, for example,

T. S. Eliot's greatly admired "The Waste Land" would be the central characteristic technique.This allusory

technique was further influenced by Shakespeare's All's

Well that Ends Well (from which the opera's motto 'simply the thing I am shall make me live' is derived); Edward

Albee's play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which provided the background concept of the Act 11 charade with its extraordinary psychological effects;?^ and,

George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House which influenced

68white, p. 94.

69Ibid.

70john Warrack, "Introduction", The Knot Garden, a complete recording (London: Phillips Recording Co., Ltd., 1974), p. 1.

71white, p. 95. 31

Tippett in the similar use of names that clearly elucidate

their owners' characters as does, for example, Shaw's

Lady Utterword.72

The resultant work would produce an opera completely different from its two predecessors but one which allows another plausible analogy to Mozart. For if The Midsummer

Marriage could be compared to Die Zauberflote, The Knot

Garden would be his Cosx fan Tutte.?3

There is the same use of two couples, with a guiding older man; there is the condition of comedy. Like all true comedy, 'The Knot Garden' is about real people whose lives are in a state of confusion which the plot unravels, so that their paths are set on a course which leads finally to, not a happy ending, but a new beginning. Where originally there was disarray and, however lightly expressed, distress, we achieve in comedy order and happi­ ness; and in 'The Knot Garden' we meet at the start a group of characters in disarray, each with his inner life in some way at odds with his outer life and an inhibition preventing the happiness of a full relationship with another human b e i n g .

At the center of the plot stand Thea and Faber, a couple whose marriage has gone wrong. Faber whose name suggests "maker, a man whose life is doing"?5 is

72Warrack, p. ii.

73Matthews, loc. cit.

T^Warrack, loc. cit.

75lbid. 32 unhappily married to and increasingly isolated from Thea, his wife who is named after a goddess. Thea's chief preoccupation appears to be the garden, a lieu walled off from Faber's city which serves as her secret retreat.

Theirs is a situation in which each partner feels both threatened and resented by the other and, with a subsequent loss of inner strength and fortitude, each has retreated into a private, self-contained world. All this is further complicated by the presence of their adolescent ward.

Flora, a name suggestive of her virginity and naivete, whose half-imagined obsessions with sexual threats from

Faber and a seeming inability to face maturity prompt the couple to hire an analyst for advice. Mangus, who has superficial connexions to Shaw's Boss Mangan of Heartbreak

House,77 quickly accesses that the probable root of any trouble lies in a marriage whose rapid decay has left its partners open to sexual experimentation. Thea's sister,

Denise, also returns home in Act 1. She has a martyr's name for she has been a freedom fighter and bears the horrible scars of excruciating torture on her now twisted body. Her electrifying appearance midway in Act 1 is

"...a great operatic number by any standards."78 it is

76lbid.

77ibid.

78white, p. 98. 33 one of sustained intensity and impassioned fervor as

Denise denounces torture and the consequent stares of her shocked family. This galvanizes the action of the opera in preparation for the fantastic series of confrontations coming in Act II.

Tippett chose to limit the entire cast to seven equal principals, with no one dominating the action, which would include besides Thea and Faber, Flora, Denise and Mangus, a homosexual couple, Mel and Dov. Mel (a name chosen to represent honey and sweetness)?^ is a Negro writer in his late twenties. Dov, his lover, is a young white musician whose name suggests gentleness and p e a c e . 80

(It is interesting to note that, although Dov is apparently left alone at the end of the opera, his subsequent journey of self-discovery and maturation is described in the later cycle "Songs for Dov", a work for tenor and orchestra written in 1969-70.)81

Act I, then, introduces us to the seven principals—

Thea and Faber whose marriage has caused severe emotional strain; Flora, the child-woman, who has assumed an artificial role for self-protection; Mel and Dov, the homosexual couple whose relationship is also at such a breaking point that they can only speak in caricature;

79ibid.. p. 96.

80warrack, loc. cit.

81lbid. 3 4

Denise, whose ordeal has given her "...a kind of exaggerated reality against which the others' problems seem doubly artificial";82 and finally, Mangus, the self-proclaimed

Prospero, a man of power and knowledge, whose work it is to set them all to rights.

In Act II the "knot" garden— aformal maze in

Elizabethan g a r d e n s ^ S — is transformed into a terrifying labyrinth for most of the characters who are whirled on and off as their "...personal tensions reach their peak, explode and r e f o r m . "84 The calming-down comes at the end of the act as Dov confronts a frightened Flora. Both sing songs representative of their personal identities— she from Die Schone Mullerin and he from a composition of his own. For them, the labyrinth slowly changes into a rose garden in which, as ancient Persian folklore believes, lovers traditionally rendezvous. 85 Dov, yielding to a new, overwhelming desire, sings to Flora:

86

82Matthews, p. 83.

83ibid.

84ibid.

85ibid.

8®Michael Tippett, The Knot Garden (London: Schott & Co., Ltd., 1970), II, 13271'+ 5, pp. 200-201. 35

Unfortunately, Flora (the "bud that hasn't o p e n e d " ^ ? )

and Dov are not able to develop their potential relationship at this time for

...just as Mel had indicated by his final, half-dismissive "Sure, baby' that blues was only a temporary solution to Denise's long and painful aria in Act One, so he enters at the end of Act Two to counter Dov's song with 'I taught you that'; and the rose garden which had begun to grow out of the chaos of the labyrinth while Dov was singing and Flora...beginning to blossom out, now quickly f a d e s . 88

A possible solution is suggested in Act III as the charade presided over by Mangus-Prospero is culminated.

Mel and Dov have portrayed Caliban and Ariel respectively,

Faber was Ferninand and Flora, Miranda. Thea and Denise were onlookers. Once the play had ended, the characters resume their natural identities and depart "...undoubtedly to face many more problems in the future, but, we feel at least better able to cope with them."89 Mel and Denise leave together for by the opera's end both she and he have confronted the "...bestial side of his nature,"90 and can relate to each other as more than a cause but as growing human beings. Dov and Flora go their separate

87ibid.. II, 1 ^ 1 , p. 190.

88Matthews, p. 84.

89Ibid.

OOwarrack, loc. cit. 36 ways for Dov actually follows Mel and Denise, but each has drawn new strength and courage from their relationship.

Mangus is left realizing that "...he has perhaps been guilty of a fantasy that holds him, too, back from self- fulfillment: 'Prospero's a fake, we all know that'"91 are his parting sentiments. Finally, Thea and Faber regain balance with reality and with their marriage.

Each puts away the ssnabols of their retreat and self- imposed isolation, seed packets and factory papers, to renew and reconcile their relationship. The last line of the opera is: "The curtain rises." This is not only to remind us that as John Warrack points out, we have been witnessing a c o m e d y , 92 but that this is also a time of fresh beginnings and progress.

The most striking overall characteristic of The Knot

Garden is its conciseness. Within a span of less than one and one-half hours, Tippett has concentrated three acts with no fewer than 32 scenes. Throughout the score,

Tippett uses the cinematically derived term "dissolve" to

"...denote the break-up of the stage picture at one point in time and its immediate re-formation at another."93

Consequently, some scenes are abrupt and extremely short

91ibid.

9 2 % b id .

93Matthews, p. 84. 37 with an understandable reliance on the visual aspects of the production to support the opera's premise. The overall language of the libretto runs the gambit from the blank-verse style of Yeats and Elliot to the slang and jargon of the 1 9 6 0 's.94 The tightness of the libretto left room for virtually no trappings or padding and the resultant language and presentation of raw human relationships stands out in bold relief.

Musically, the work is a synthesis of all his previous styles with some striking innovations. It is a score of

"...lapidary compression, notable for its metallic sonorities; its use of a 12-note theme (though not serial technique) to represent a fractured relationship and its revival of blues and boogie-woogie in a manner analagous to his use of spirituals in A Child of Our T i m e ."95

There is also a more pronounced angularity in the vocal line (a trend which, by the way, will have a definite influence in his writings of The Ice Break.) Note this example from Denise's stirring Act I aria:

94ibid., p. 85.

95Kemp, "Tippett, Michael", p. 10. 38 ± __ ?"T- ¥

r U/âA/t - NO '— "

f — />!«* |S C ^ 7 ■ ^ ^ ^>-r ^ jmW

b f - 'T'LlS'— Jts — tof' - — “ — *" ^ '”3 ______li È 9 pf'* c l c - OUA/ut K r~

/O— V i — — — 96 ^ --p-4—1— ^— H r /VO •

One other innovative idea in The Knot Garden is that

of musical allusion. For example, there are strains of

the great civi1-rights era protest song, "We shall

Overcome", as well as allusions from Tippett's own earlier

songs, "Full Fathom Five" and "Come unto these Yellow

Sands."97 (As was noted earlier. Flora sings "Die grune

Farbe" from Schubert's Die Schone Mullerin.)

96Tippett, The Knot Garden, I, |165|, pp. 86-88.

9?Matthews, p. 88. 39

The Knot Garden received its distinguished world premiere on December 2, 1970, at the Royal Opera House at

Covent Garden. Colin Davis, who had recently been named musical director and who is considered by many to be

"...an ideal interpreter of Tippett's music,"98 was conductor with Peter Hall, the noted stage director and current director of the English National Theater, as producer. The production was a great success and enjoyed an equally outstanding revival in 1972. The Phillips record of the 1972 Covent Garden production appeared in

1974.

98white, p. 111. CHAPTER TWO

THE ICE BREAK

BACKGROUND

In 1965, Tippett made his first of many visits to

the United States where his music was rapidly finding an

eager and appreciative audience. Already a lover of jazz

and the blues, indeed their influence could be felt in

his works dating from 1930's^, the true Americanization

of his music can be felt in The Knot Garden which calls

for electric guitar and has the wonderful blues ensemble that closes Act 1.2 Tippett's Third Symphony, written between 1970 and 1972, also has three marvelous blues- inspired solos for soprano. The fourth soprano solo of this symphony is of a much more dramatic temperament as

Tippett seeks to place the Ode to Joy within the context of the disillusionment rampant during the late 1960's and early 1970's.3

This Americanization, coupled with the realization of the effect caused by the masked revellers in a 1968-69

lOavid Matthews, Michael Tippett: An Introductory Study (London: Faber and Faber, 1980), p. 90.

2lbid.

3lbid.. p. 94.

40 41 season performance of Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini at Covent

Garden,4 were significant factors during the development period of his fourth and final opera to date. The Ice

Break. His conception of the title for a work whose music contains

...two archetypal sounds; one related to the frightened but exhilarating sound of the ice breaking on the great northern rivers in the spring; the other related to the exciting or terrifying sound of the slogan-shouting crowds, which can lift you on their shoulders in triumph or stamp you to deathS was probably influenced by Igor Stravinsky's answer to the question; What do you love most in Russia?

The violent Russian spring that seemed to begin in an hour and was like the whole earth cracking. That was the most wonderful event of every year of my childhood.G

Although Tippett explicitly avoids mention of exact times, locations and nationalities throughout the score, there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence to imply that the action takes place in North America during the mid-to-late 1960's in a major urban center such as Chicago or New York. It also appears that at least three of the

^Eric Walter White, Tippett and his operas (London: Barrie & Jenkins, Ltd., 1979), p. 115.

^Michael Tippett, The Ice Break (London: Schott & Co., Ltd., 1977), introductory notes.

Gwhite, loc. cit. 42 principals are influenced by past experiences in a totalitarian state such as Russia. The plot itself revolves around several rival groups and personalities; thus, Tippett insists on various scenes in which the chorus and some of the principals are masked so that

"...stereotypes are in question, rather than any presently exacerbated example."?

SYNOPSIS

Act I consists of 10 scenes and lasts an incredibly concentrated 22 minutes. It opens in an airport lounge where Nadia, a slightly mystic immigrant, anxiously waits for the arrival of her husband Lev (the "lion") from whom she has been separated for twenty years. Their son Yuri is with her but is bitter at the thought of meeting the father he has never seen, although their separation was apparently caused by Lev's forced exile. Concurrent with

Lev's arrival is that of Olympian, the black hero. The airport swells with his vociferous fans which included not only his black girlfriend, Hannah, but Yuri's white girlfriend, Gayle, as well. Lev and Nadia are reunited;

Yuri goes to a celebration for Olympion with Gayle where she prostrates herself in submission before the black hero.

? I b i d . . p. 114. 43

Incensed, Yuri tries to attack Olympion only to be floored

by the champion. Slowly, the chorus and principals divide

into rival groups of blacks and whites in ominous preparation

for the brutal confrontation of Act II. The act ends

with the embittered Yuri bursting into Nadia's apartment

to demand of Lev: "What have you come here for?"

Act II lasts 25 minutes and also consists of ten

intensely concentrated scenes. In the opening scene and

quartet. Lev, Nadia, Yuri and Gayle each address their

deep, personal insecurities. As the scene concludes,

Yuri and Gayle accept the symbolic hoods of the white

extremists. Hannah and Olympion share a brief romantic

interlude during the next scene which takes place in

their bedroom. It is at this point, however, that Olympion

definitely decides to lead his black brothers in the

impending conflict. Although it may cause permanent separation from her lover, Hannah cannot follow. In one of the most beautiful and lyrical of all Tippett arias and the musical highpoint of the opera, she explores the

incomprehensible feeling that warns her: "not that, only not that." In the following scene there is a series of ritualized dances representative of each ethnic group.

Warfare erupts leaving two of the principals dead:

Olympion, the black hero, and Gayle, who fought with the whites. As Lev rushes on stage, Yuri, the apparent leader of the white mob, is found to be seriously 44 wounded. Although she is the nurse who has assisted in

the care of the dead and wounded after the violent bloodbath and has found that her own lover has been killed, Hannah does not leave the stage with the doctor, policemen or ambulance. Instead, in a poigmant climax to the horrors of the act. Lev and Hannah are left alone on stage to silently mourn their individual loss and seek comfort for their sorrow as the solo violin, horns and solo cello play. The scene closes with Lev accepting the doctor's advice and turning to Hannah, as she turns to him, for comfort.

Act III has nine scenes and is the longest with 28 minutes. The opening scene takes place in Nadia's apartment where Lev reads poetry to his dying wife.

After a brief visit from Doctor Luke and Nurse Hannah,

Lev's worst fears of Nadia's impending death are confirmed.

Once again Hannah remains behind to comfort Lev and attend to Nadia's last needs. At this point Nadia sings her hauntingly beautiful final aria which is filled with poignantly vivid memories of her cherished homeland, family and childhood experiences. As she dies. Lev cries:

"Nadia, wait for me in Paradise!" The next scene, one of the most controversial in the opera, is the psychedelic trip in which the messenger Astron greets an ebullient chorus of pseudo-flower children with: "Spring come to you from the farthest end of the harvest." The scene 45 ends with Astron's ironic refusal to accept any adulation as a savior or hero from the chorus. The entire act concludes with Yuri's operation by Doctor Luke and Nurse

Hannah where the plaster cast which has completely encased him both physically and psychologically is symbolically removed. He is happily reunited with an anxious Lev who quotes in the closing lines of the opera: "Yet you will always be brought forth again, glorious image of God; and likewise be maimed and wounded afresh from within or without."

Even this brief synopsis reveals that the tone of reconciliation is also important in The Ice Break.

Further critical analysis allows us to note what specific techniques Tippett was able to utilize in creating and sustaining such a tone througout the work. One of the most salient means was through character development, particularly with respect to the main characters Lev,

Nadia, Yuri, Gayle, Olympion and Hannah. It is to this aspect, then, that one should turn for a more penetrating analysis of The Ice Break and the hope of reconciliation it contains.

LEV

Much as he had previously attempted in The Knot

Garden. Tippett apparently essentially designed the six main principals to be somewhat equal (although three die 46 during the course of the opera.) However, Lev does stand out among apparent equals through the sheer force of his music and character representation. Interestingly enough, we hear Lev's voice before we actually see him. During the opening airport lounge scene of Act I, Nadia momentarily forgets her surroundings and rather mystically muses that she can even hear Lev's voice speaking to her as she awaits his arrival. Off-stage Lev reples:

"I came from exile in the spring, as the ice was breaking on the rivers.

The opening motif played during the opera's first 10 measures occurs again at this point and will occur each time the inference of ice breaking upon the rivers as spring appears. This important motif appears as follows in the opening measures of Act I :

3 ? 3 m

^Michael Tippett , The Ice Break (London: Schott & Co., Ltd., 1977), I, lio I , p. 8.

Gibid.. I, |1|, p. 1. 47

Also during Lev's opening musical lines we realize

that he was an exile for whom the sound of breaking ice

was indicative of his despair. For whatever reason. Lev

has evidently been freed and allowed to fly to a new

country to be with his family. Now, the sound of breaking

ice has changed from despair to hope for him— a hope

generated by memories of happier days with Nadia.

Tippett adeptly used inferences and half-spoken

lines as Lev explains to Nadia in scene 8 of Act I how he

survived the ordeal. It is here that we learn that he

suffered not only exile but prison and the labor camps as

well. The orchestration is sparse and the texture is

thin with only a few running sixteenth-note patterns

utilized to accentuate the anxious yet hesitant desire of both to convey emotions that have been so tightly contained

for such a long time. There are measures in this passage,

for example, for solo strings (con sorda), electric guitar

(more evidence of his Americanization and first heard in

The Knot Garden), and sustained harp with strings. It is not until Nadia's outburst of joy that Lev is alive that

Tippett allows a denser orchestration. This density con­ tinues through the next measure as Lev explains: "Poetry upheld me."^0 (Interestingly enough, Tippett gives no references to the poetry quoted by Lev in the opera.

10 Ibid.. I, |76| + 2, p. 56. 48

This was probably in line with his refusal to name definite

localities or to designate a specific time period around

which the action evolves, thus heightening the timelessness

of the work itself.) With this quote— a quote which, by

the way poignantly underlines the importance of the right

to the enjoyment of reality as opposed to the hope of

future bliss— coupled with the prominence of poetry in his prison experience. Lev begins to assume Solzhenitsyn-

like propensities with hues of a Gulag Archipelago experience. Once again, Tippett never admits to such an influence but within the brief span of the opera, the inferences are rather succinct and, at times, arresting.

The act ends with the embittered Yuri bursting into

Nadia's apartment demanding to know why Lev has come.

Moments previous to Yuri's entrance. Lev and Nadia have discussed their troubled son. Lev promises to love and to help the young man in response to Nadia's anxious pleas, but as the curtain falls on Act I we are left uncertain as to the outcome of this father-son confronta­ tion. Tippett expertly accentuates the intense drama of the moment by allowing the music to be tranquil and sustained as the parents discuss Yuri. However, in the four measures preceding Yuri's disruptive entrance, fragments of the chant "Out, whitey, out" rise in the background increasing to an almost fevered pitch in the measure before Yuri appears. Lev must bear Yuri's 49 vehemently hateful stare for a full measure of silence before Yuri's unaccompanied outburst: "What have you come here for?" The curtain falls immediately leaving, needless to say, a dramatic effect of great intensity.

Although Act I has moved rapidly, certain characteristics and experiences of Lev have come to the fore. He faces

the need for reconciliation on at least two levels:

that with his son and that with his new lifestyle. The balance of the opera will provide at least a glimpse of his ability to forge ahead and find the means to achieve

that reconciliation.

Act II opens in Nadia's apartment where the quartet of white principals— Lev, Nadia, Yuri and Gayle— sing in ensemble of their respective inner feelings. It is not surprising that Tippett allows Lev to quote from poetry

in the expression of his frustration and anxiety:

"Vfho am I to bear the burdens of this world: To be the boss, the navel of the earth. Let alone the salt."11

Lev breaks out of the ensemble in a passage representative

of the melodic angularity Tippett uses in writing for the vocal line to reveal another important facet of his

character— pacifism or non-violence:

lllbid. . II, Ij^l + 4, pp. 103-112. 50

7 • g ? î Ica/cc ----- l’i — 5/»vol. Srv-

12

*7^--- /)<9i/c. '

Unfortunately, this pacifism does not endear Lev to Yuri who grows increasingly bitter and hostile towards his father.

This antagonism, however, has not altered Lev's affection for his son for, after the racial bloodbath which occurs later in the act, it is Lev— not Nadia— who comes in search of Yuri. Thus, at the end of Act II, Tippett allows us a glimpse of the compassionate father in Lev as he expresses genuine shock and grief at finding Yuri wounded. (Note scene nine of Act II.) One other subtle characteristic of Lev's personality becomes evident in the concluding scene of the act, namely. Lev is oblivious to color as he is not afraid or ashamed to turn to the black nurse for comfort.

Act II opens again in Nadia's apartment. Lev reads poetry aloud to his dying wife. This act will demand

ISlbid., II, 11401, p. 113. 51

that Lev comes to terms with the inevitable death of Nadia

and the hatred of his son. For the first aspect, Tippett

has written a brilliant aria-like passage for Lev during

Nadia's dying moments in which he endeavors to vent to

Hannah the frustrations which have been building up since

his reunion with Nadia and Yuri. The vocally demanding

passage is rich in Tippett's driving, pulsating use of

interchanged duple and triple meters. The vocal line has

the same angularity characteristic of Tippett's writing

throughout the work. The mood is dark and tense. However,

when at Nadia's death, he asks her to wait for him in

Paradise, one cannot help but feel that Tippett must have

wanted this to signal some type of positive turning point

for Lev.

In the second aspect. Lev waits anxiously on stage

during Yuri's operation. During the scene, Tippett has

Lev look upon the entire process as a thing of joy for in

the quartet (Doctor Luke, Nurse Hannah, Yuri and Lev) which is sung during the operation. Lev sings:

"Now begins the beautiful operation. With saw and cutter to crack the shell to release the naked chick..."13

Perhaps Tippett has allowed Lev to express the wisdom behind an operation which is necessary not only for the physical health of Yuri but his psychological maturation

13ibid.. Ill, l420|, pp. 327-331. 52 as well. The greatest moment of reconciliation for Lev comes in the final scene of the opera when Yuri is wheeled downstage to his father. They embrace and Tippett closes the opera with Lev as he quotes:

"Yet you will always be brought forth again. Glorious image of God; and likewise be maimed, wounded afresh, from within or w i t h o u t . "14

NADIA

Our first introduction to Nadia in Act I leaves us with the impression of a nervous, anxious woman which is exactly as it should be for she is a woman who has been separated by exile and immigration from her husband of twenty years. She reminisces over her long journey to this, a new land; she pesters Yuri about the plane's arrival; she imagines that she actually hears Lev's voice.

All this is, of course, wonderfully captured in Tippett's music which allows her expansive lines when she reminisces and jagged lines as she pesters. Nadia's real inner strength becomes more evident, however, in scene 8 of

Act I when, in reply to Lev's question about her personal situation, she acknowledges that her new land was

14ibid. . Ill, 14^1, pp. 355-358. 53

g 15

fio éteAmj ^ '■«5^ tfotMB//. — (B o t tue. ■)

Tippett gives Nadia further evidences of inner depth as she recognizes that Yuri is indeed a troubled young man and will need Lev's help. However, more of Nadia's mysticism and strength of character are revealed in the opening Act II quartet where she sings these words:

"Like him (Lev) I have hoped I have endured in the dungeons of this town. Because I see the river shining with light As it cleaves the f o r e s t . "16

It is however, in Act III that Nadia becomes "...fuller and rounder, and this has an effect on the character of

Lev as her former lover and present husband.1? With consummate skill and a wonderful sense of nuance, Tippett gives Nadia a swan song of death in which she recalls long-forgotten episodes from her youth. This is done so beautifully until "...by the time she dies, she and Lev have completely won the audiences interest."18 This haunting passage calls for long, expansive vocal lines

ISlbid., I, |75|, p. 55.

IGlbid.. II, 1Î351 + 4, pp. 103-112.

ITWhite, p. 122.

ISlbid. 54 and, with Tippett's penchant for angularity in the vocal lines of this opera, it places significant demands on the singer's command of vocal range. Note the following example:

T r rCTT~ J5 yrr^ l| IAI r -P-- M - f W—4.L-A--A I I t — ; ^ — — Se6 —

19

O /vcL / . / ^

Throughout her entire passage, which, by the way, is interrupted from time to time by comments from Nurse

Hannah and Lev or by Lev's impassioned aria, Tippett alternates the meter between duple and triple. At the musical apex of her death song, the "ice break" motif sounds clearly in first the strings and bassoons, followed by the brass as Nadia herself recalls the majestic sound of the ice breaking on the river. The orchestration, whose texture varies from light to extremely dense in accordance with Nadia's sentiments, calls for everything from muted violas, cellos and horns to electric guitars

ISTippett, III, 1 ^ 1 , p. 271. 55 and glockenspiel. The passage ends with a marvelously lyrical line for Nadia as she sings to the accompaniment of a distant chorus:

"I glide downstream. The wide water is full of folk calling... calling..."20

Nadia has experienced reconciliation with her long- separated husband, Lev, and has even been allowed to lay the groundwork for an eventual reconciliation between the estranged father and son. Now, with the audience's full attention and sympathetic interest, Tippett affords her the greatest reconciliation of all— that with death.

YURI

Eric W. White believes that Yuri was "...never a very firmly established character."21 Due, no doubt, to the extreme compactness of the action, Yuri is among the principals whose characterization affords little time to gain the audience's sympathetic attention. He remains a bitter, alienated youth throughout most of the opera.

Only during the operation scene of Act III do we begin to sense that he has indeed begun some type of psychological transformation. Even after the surgery is complete and

20lbid. . Ill, 1 ^ 1 , p. 272-274.

21White, p. 122. 56 the prognosis appears positive (for Yuri is strong enough to be wheeled out to Lev), we are still unsure as to whether the inner transformation will be equally as successful, for Tippett has him mock the doctor with

Olympion’s and Hannah’s catchy Act I phraseology as he sings:

g± 22

AinJt --- t W : SO, }{cLK>Ata,h, ? Hannah cautions Yuri in that final scene that the answer lies "...much deeper" and we are left to suspend our judgment on Yuri’s ability to forge true reconciliation for that will be "...another song or another s t o r y . "23

(Perhaps Tippett will answer the question for us in a cycle for Yuri as he did for Dov of The Knot Garden.)

GAYLE AND OLYMPION

David Matthews feels that, among the principals and due, in part, again to the conciseness of the opera.

22Tippett, III, l4^! , p. 352.

23white, p. 99. 57

Olympion and Gayle hardly have the time to

...emerge as anything more that strip- cartoon figures (though the deaths of Olympion and Gayle are somehow made more inevitable and 'right' by presenting them as cyphers who speak only in slogans and c l i c h e s . ) 24

Despite the limited quality of their character development,

both Gayle and Olympion have been given wonderful passages

which occur, interestingly enough, in the first act.

Olympion's first great musical passage occurs upon

his bombastic arrival at the airport where he is greeted

by hordes of his cheering, adoring fans. Upon seeing the

crowds he boasts:

"I'm black. I'm beautiful. I'm unbeatable."

There are unmistakable overtones of Muhammed Ali in the

entire characterization of Olympion and Tippett has

composed Olympion's entrance aria to be sung with a jazz­

like electric guitar accompaniment combined at times with solo xylophone and at other times with full orchestra.

The general overall form is A-B-C with each part intrinsically related. It is difficult to assign a specific tonality to the entire passage. What is more interesting, however, is Tippett's use of the "trillo".

24jjatthews, p. 99. 58 the Renaissance ornament consisting of increasingly rapid repetitions on the same note with the same vowel sound. -MMS-

25 - b i a . C t k )

While lacking the extreme angularity characteristic of

much of Tippett's solo vocal writing in The Ice Break,

Olympion's first act entrance does have several melismatic

passages and several skips of major and minor sevenths.

His second dramatic musical moment occurs during the

scene 9 party given in his honor. Here Olympion gives a

powerfully intense denunciation of Yuri's condensing

attitude as he sings with racial indignation and bravura.

Gone are the florid passages of the entering hero to an

adoring crowd of fans. Instead, Tippett resorts to the

angularity of line and expansive phrasing reminiscent of

Denise's powerfully dramatic Act I aria in The Knot Garden.

25lbid.. 1, 1^1 + 2, pp. 37-38. 59

Note the following example of such angularity and its effectiveness in bringing out the import of Olympion's words:

$ t s /Wi — — -jclks hA\ft-—* li/eJ lAAfé

26

Gayle's most significant solo passages also occur during the scene 9 party. In response to Olympion's evocative music, Gayle proclaims that all the injustice is now past and she wants to make amends by kissing

Olympion. (This is the catalyst for the racial eruption that follows.) Tippett has written a wonderful tour-de- force for the soprano which combined florid passages with the broader, much more expansive legato line. The orchestration is brilliantly innovative calling for instrumentation ranging from the bongo drum to electric organ, bells and trombones. The trumpets and oboes both have measures calling for repeated forte staccato triplets

26lbid., I, 1^1, pp. 72-73. 60

which heighten the intensity of Gayle's response. Tippett

brings her solo passage to a stunningly effective climax

with a further utilization of the Renaisssance "trillo"

technique as Gayle sings her final series of the word

"kiss":

I

K; . x; — K* - iO - hi -«A./ K ii-s

HANNAH

One of the most sympathetic of all characters in The

Ice Break is Hannah. Although we are not aware that she is a nurse until the closing scenes of Act II, we do know that she is Olympion's girlfriend who does not always agree with him (note scene 9 of Act I) and is one who, for reasons that are incomprehensible even to her, cannot join her lover or other black sisters and brothers in the

Act II bloodbath. (Eric White believes that Hannah is distantly related to Claire, a hospital doctor, who was omitted from the cast list of The Knot Garden at the last moment.28) The expression of these incomprehensible sentiments in the Act II aria "Blue Night of My Soul" has

27 l b i d . , I, l l ^ l , p. 88.

28white, p. 116. 61

provided us with one of Tippett's most expressive and

lyrical pieces of writing and is the very heart of the

opera. It is indeed

...an inspired successor to the great series of introspective monologues for female voice in Tippett's operas, from Sosostris's aria in The Midsummer Marriage through Helen's 'Let her rave' in King Priam to Denise's aria in The Knot Garden...29

Tippett uses a ternary form to give the aria a sense of great cohesiveness. The following schematic outline of the vocal line might prove useful in elucidating the overall structure:

MEASURES KEY AREA THEME CADENCE

1 to 5 *F major a ] Incomplete 6 to 10 if major a:J = A Incomplete 11 to 18 A° major ag] Incomplete 20 to 25 Y tt major b Authentic 26 to 35 F# major bl Incomplete 36 to 45 F minor c Incomplete 46 to 51 F# major bi = B Authentic 52 to 61 F# major b Incomplete 64 to 65 E major dl Incomplete 67 to 68 E major d Authentic 70 to 79 Ambiguous e Incomplete (Although the accompaniment is derived from "d" material, the vocal line consists of new ideas.) 80 to 91 E" major ending in A minor f Authentic 92 to 109 major ending in E minor fl Authentic 110 to 114 F major as ] Incomplete * (The solo flute plays an exact imitation of the opening vocal lines, measures 6-10.) 120 to 128 A^ major moving = A to E° major a^ ] Authentic

(Continued on next page)

29Matthews, p. 99. 62

(The solo flute again plays an exact imitation of the vocal lines of measures 11 to 18 in measures 120 to 124. Also, it is the vocal line that has a strong feeling of authentic cadence at this point and not the accompaniment.)

Here, too, we find the now typical Tippett angularity in the vocal line but the hauntingly beautiful lyricism of the music imbues the jaggedness with a wonderful expansiveness. Note a part of the "a" theme of Hannah's aria:

Adagio = 60

9 H 30 — -

The orchestration of the aria is sparse throughout most of the opening measures, although the texture does become more dense particularly in the places where Hannah's emotion intensifies (i.e., the orchestration is fuller when she sings: "I scrabble for unformed letters that might make a word to speak sense..." at measures 36

through 43.)

Finally, another beautiful example of Tippett's

ability to write an angular vocal line that is still

lyrical occurs at measures 80 to 109 as she repeatedly

sings the word "Alone". By the end of this haunting

SOl b i d . . II, I188|, p. 160. 63 sequence, the aria has cooled in its passion allowing

Hannah to conclude the aria on a more subdued, introspec­

tive tone as she sings:

"Deep in the body; dark in the soul; an incommunicable voice murmuring: not that, only not that."31

This aria marks a turning point in Hannah's

characterization. She develops from being simply Olympion's

independent-thinking girlfriend to a woman filled with compassion and understanding. She is important to the overall ambience of reconciliation and hope which permeates

the latter half of the opera for it is she who comforts

Lev after Yuri's injuries and at Nadia's death; it is she who listens to his bitter memories of the camps and exile; and it is she who wheels the recuperating Yuri to his anxious father. By the opera's end, Hannah has won the audience's overwhelming sympathy as she emerges as the

"earth mother" of The Ice Break.

THE MOB

Although the theme of reconciliation is a succinct part of principals' characterization, the rivalry of the mobs and their symbolic turning point is germane as well.

Sllbid. , II, 1 ^ 1 , pp. 175-177. 64

Tippett effectively sets up the Act II racial confrontation

in the middle of Act I. Gayle's advances to Olympion

supposedly shock the sensibilities of everyone present

causing the racial division to quickly become blatantly

clear. To accentuate this division, Tippett gives the

white group a conspicuously Klu Klux Klan-like mentality

which finds expression in their Act II rigid, Revival-

style hymn:

"A band of pure Caucasiens, The noblest of the Klan, We stand in rank together White woman with white..."32

The bombastic militancy of the opposing black group is

evident in their ejaculatory chant:

"Our fist, our boot, our hammer. He'll [Olympion] flick that whitey out Out, out, Whitey out, Whitey out. Out, out, Whitey out, Whitey out. Out, out, out, out, out. Burn, baby, burn ! Burn, b a b y "33

As the two mobs, now masked, reappear on stage after

Hannah's aria, Tippett has them undergo a process of symbolic "tribalization." He uses a series of instrumental confrontations representative of tribal dances for both blacks and whites. Eric White outlines this ritual music as follows:

32ibid., II, 1159|, pp. 134-135.

33ibid.. II, |I75|, pp. 148-156. 65

"A A cocky little passage for solo violin marked brillante marcatissimo with plenti­ ful double-stopping. (For whites)

"B A theme for solo clarinet marked brillante : accenti forti. (For blacks)

"C A heavy march-like passage for violins accompanied by remainder strings, marked pesante and non legato. (For whites)

"D A theme, closely related to B, but turned into a two-part invention for (i) piccolos and (ii) oboes and cor anglais, with an accompaniment for five tuned drums and piano, in which the metrical pattern is constantly varied. (For blacks)

"E A variant of C. (For whites)

"F A slight variant of D. (For blacks)

"G A two-part invention consisting of A with a second part added for viola solo. (For whites)

"H A two-part invention derived from D and F. (For blacks)

"I A further variant of C. (For whites)

"J A further variant of B." (For b l a c k s ) 3 4

After the racial clash in Act II, the hooded mob of stereotypes no longer appears in the opera. The confronta­ tion appears to have been a symbolic turning point. As the general tone of the opera turns to gradual renewal and reconciliation, the black-white issue never comes into focus again and our attention turns to the more immediate problems of Lev, Nadia, Hannah and Yuri.

34white, pp. 119-120. 66

Perhaps through the effectiveness of Hannah as an "earth mother" after the racial confrontation, Tippett subtly implies that a type of racial reconciliation can take place— albeit on a one-to-one basis.

******************

The Ice Break received its acclaimed world premiere on July 7, 1977, at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden under the baton of Colin Davis, to whom the work is dedicated. Sam Wanamaker was the producer with scenery and costumes by Ralph Kotai, choreography by Walter Raines and lighting by David Hersey. The cast was headed by

John Shirley-Quirk as Lev and Heather Harper as Nadia.

Tippett enjoyed an unqualified triumph and has since seen the work produced by Sarah Caldwell and the Opera Company of Boston in May, 1979; a Covent Garden revival in May-

June, 1979; and its first production in a German trans­ lation by Ken W. Bartlett for the Kiel Opera in June,

1978. CHAPTER III

SUMMARY

Sir Michael Tippett is a man of hope. His works are imbued with this feeling and testify to the importance of the theme of reconciliation despite apparently insurmountable odds whether it be in one's personal or in the greater socio-political sphere. This is particularly true of his large-scale vocal works and in particular, his four full- length operas and their most influential predecessor, the oratorio A Child of Our Time. Tippett has conclusively proven himself to be a creative genius to be reckoned with and nowhere is this more apparent than in the innovative The Midsummer Marriage. Here overtones of

Jungian psychology and Mozartean operatic techniques combine in a work in which each of the two couples must find his or her inner self before reconciliation in love can be achieved. In King Priam, the immediate successor to The Midsummer Marriage, reconciliation with pre­ ordained fate because of the king's disastrous choice is analyzed and explored. The Knot Garden allows us to view the psychological growth of seven people which eventually leads tc an ability on each protagonist's part to be reconciled with him - or herself.

67 68

Finally, The Ice Break suggests that reconciliation

is possible despite the viciousness of racial confrontation,

the obdurate chasm between generations or the strains of

moving to a new land. Lev and Hannah are the opera's most positive examples of reconciliation and their

characterizations offer us hope that perhaps in them we can see a reflection of what is possible in humanity. BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS AND ARTICLES

Aechternach, A. "Tippett in America/America in Tippett," Composer. LXX (Summer 1980), 28-33.

Blyth, A. "Sir Michael Tippett," Gramophone, XLVIII, (April 1971), 1598.

Eliot, Thomas Stern. Murder in the Cathedral. London: Faber and Faber, 1935.

Eliot, Thomas Stern. The Waste Land. New York: Horace Liverright, 1928.

Garvie, P. "Strangeness in Proportion," Composer, LXX (Summer 1980), 21-26.

Goehr, A. "Tippett at Sixty," Musical Times, CVI (January 4, 1965), 22-24.

Hurd, M. Tippett. London: Novello, 1978.

Jung, Carl. Man and His Symbols. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1979.

Kemp, Ian. Michael Tippett: Symposium on his 60th Birthday. london: Faber & Faber, 1965.

Kemp, Ian. "Tippett, Michael," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 6th ed., 20 vols., ed. Stanley Sadie. London: MacMillan, 1980, XIX, 1-11.

Matthews, David. Michael Tippett: An Introductory Study. London: Faber & Faber, 1980.

Mellers, W. H. "New Trends in Britain," Modern Music, XXI, (May 1944), 212-216.

69 70

Milner, A. "Rhythmic Techniques in the Music of Michael Tippett," Musical Times, XCV (September 1954), 468-70.

Milner, A. "The Music of Michael Tippett," Musical Quarterly, L/4 (1964), 423-38.

Nissen, A. "A British composer visits 'this exuberant' America," Wall Street Journal, LVIII (July 28, 1978), 9.

Routh, F. "Music and Magic," Composer. LXX (Summer 1980), 35-37.

Tippett- Michael. "A personal view of music in England," Festschrift fur einen Verleger: Ludwig Strecker zum 90. Geburtstag, Carl Dahlhaus, ed. Mainz: B. Schott's Sohne, 1973.

Tippett, Michael. Abundance of Creation. London : Housmans, 1976.

Tippett, Michael. "Art and Man," Musical Times. CXXI (March 1980), 175.

Tippett, Michael. "Die Spaltung Unserer Musik," Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, CXXIII (February 6, 1962), 53-56.

Tippett, Michael. "Introduction," Music and the Brain; Studies in the Neurology of Music, ed. M. Crichley and R. A. Henson. London: Heinemann, 1977.

Tippett, Michael. Moving into Aquarius. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959.

Tippett, Michael. Music of the Angels: Essays and Sketch­ books of Michael Tippett. London: Eulenberg Books, 1980.

Tippett, Michael. "Some Categories of Judgement in Modern Music," Composer, LIX (Winter 1976-1977), 9-11.

Tippett, Michael. "Tippett on Opera— Sir Michael Tippett Talks to the Editor," Opera. XXIII (April 1973), 370.

Wanamaker, Sam. "Preparing for 'The Ice Break'," Opera, XXVIII (August 1977), 798-802.

Warrack, John. Record Jacket Notes for Michael Tippett's The Knot Garden, performed by the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Colin Davis. Phillips 6700 063, 1974. 71

White, Eric Walter. Tippett and His Operas. London: Barrie and Jenkins, Ltd., 1979.

MUSIC

Tippett, Michael. King Priam. London: Schott & Co., 1962,

. The Ice Break. London: Schott & Co., 1977.

The Knot Garden. London: Schott & Co., 1970.

The Midsummer Marriage. London: Schott & Co., 1954.

A Child of our Time. London: Schott & Co., Ltd., 1944.

RELATED DISCOGRAPHY AND TAPES

Tippett, Michael. A Child of our Time, performed by the Royal Liverpool Orchestra and chorus, conducted by John Pritchard. Decca/Argo ZDA 19-20.

Tippett, Michael. The Knot Garden, performed by the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Colin Davis. Phillips 6700-063.

Tippett, Michael. The Ice Break, performed by the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden Orchestra and Chorus, con­ ducted by Colin Davis. Private tape of live BBC Radio Broadcast on July 20, 1977.

Tippett, Michael. The Midsummer Marriage, performed by the Royal Opera House at covent Garden Chorus and the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Colin Davis. Phillips 6580-093.