1 - Background

Summary

Tippett – politics – pacifism

People come to pacifism for many reasons. My own conviction is based on the incompatibility of the acts of modern war with the concept I hold of what man is at all. That good men do these acts, I am well aware. But I hold their actions to spring from an inability or unwillingness to face the fact that modern wars debase our moral coinage to a greater degree than could be counterbalanced by political gains; so that the necessity to find other means of political struggle is absolute. That was certainly my conviction during the Second World War. My refusal to take part was thus for me inescapable, and my punishment with a relatively light term of imprisonment logical.

Tippett's initial impulse to compose A Child of Our Time is widely understood as a reaction to an immediate historical event and a response to a more generalised predicament. However, beyond the specific circumstances of this work, Tippett was, and remained, a deeply conscious, committed composer, a figure who was always uniquely aware of his own position in relation to broader social, political and historical developments.

Throughout the 1930s Tippett's increasing awareness of the surrounding political climate had large-scale implications for both his own music and his relationship to a wider community. His understanding of the position of the composer within society first manifested itself through his involvement with amateur events at Oxted, the small town that was his home from 1929 to 1951.