Born in London on 2 January 1905, Sir Michael Tippett spent his childhood at Wetherden in Suffolk County. From 1909 to 1914, he was raised by private tutors, who taught him piano among other things, and by a governess. From 1914 to 1918, he attended Brookfield Preparatory School in Dorset; he received his secondary education at Fettes College in Edinburgh. However, in 1920, upon learning that their son was in a homosexual relationship with a fellow student, his parents transfered him to Stamford School in Lincolnshire. From 1923 to 1928, Tippett undertook study at the Royal College of Music, making the most of the music and theatre scenes in London, the latter of which would have a deep influence on his artistic career. He later moved to Oxted in Surrey, teaching French at a private school in Limpsfield and conducting a choir and an orchestra as part of a concert society, all while dedicating most of his time to composition. On 5 April 1930, key works from Tippet’s youth were performed in a concert in Oxted; the composer withdrew those works from his catalogue soon thereafter. He undertook further study of composition with Reginald Owen Morris, which proved to be particularly formative: Tippett acquired a remarkable mastery of counterpoint, a key element in his first mature works, e.g., String Quartet No. 1 (1934-1935, revised in 1943) and Piano Sonata No. 1 (1936-1938).

Throughout his studies, Tippett showed a deep understanding of the major events of his time: the First World War, the Great Depression, mass unemployment, and children suffering from hunger in Great Britain. He became a proponent of radical politics, founded the South London Orchestra of Unemployed Musicians, and conducted two choirs funded by the Royal Arsenal Cooperative Society. In the late 1930s, his personal aesthetic became solidly established following a series of meetings with T. S. Eliot. These meetings also gave rise to the composition of the oratorio A Child of Our Time (1939-1941), a work of impassioned protest against persecution and tyranny, and Tippet’s most widely-performed work.

Tippett served as musical director of Morley College (London) from 1940 to 1951, re-inventing the institution as a centre for research and performance of the works of Purcell, as well as those of promising contemporary artists, such as Alfred Deller, Peter Pears, and the Amadeus Quartet, who went on to gain broad international recognition. During this time, Tippett was imprisoned for six months at Wormwood Scrubs for refusing to respect the conditions of his exemption from military service. Throughout the experience, he remained a dedicated pacifist. On 8 August 1944, his cottage in Oxted was severely damaged in an aerial bombardment (other houses in the town were destroyed), and although Tippett escaped unscathed, several of his neighbours were injured or killed.

When he left Morley College, Tippett dedicated his time almost exclusively to composition, earning a modest income on the side by occasionally working for the BBC. He completed his Symphony No. 1 in 1945, and immediately thereafter began work on his first opera, The Midsummer Marriage, which, like his subsequent operas, was produced by the Royal Opera House. In 1951, he moved to Tidebrook in East Sussex. Tippet’s reputation grew over time, in part thanks to the international distribution of recordings of a number of his pieces. His music was notably appreciated in the United States, and many of his most important works, such as Symphony No. 4 and The Mask of Time came about through American commissions.

Throughout his career, Tippett received numerous accolades. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1959, was knighted in 1966, and was admitted into the Order of the Companions of Honour and the Order of Merit in 1979 and 1983, respectively. He was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal in 1976.

At the age of 80, Tippett was still remarkably active as a composer and conductor, regularly giving concerts in Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia. His fifth opera, New Year, a co-commission of the Houston Grand Opera, the Glyndebourne Festival, and the BBC, was premiered in 1989 and toured in the United Kingdom the following year. The BBC broadcast its own production of the work in 1991. In the same year, Byzantium (1988-1990) for soprano and orchestra was premiered in Chicago and subsequently performed at the BBC Proms, and his String Quartet No. 5 (1990-1991) was premiered.

In 1995, celebrations of Tippett’s 90th birthday included the publication of a special edition of the BBC Music Magazine dedicated to the composer and a month-long Tippett festival at the Barbican Centre, which concluded with the premiere performance of his final masterpiece, The Rose Lake, by the London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis conducting. The work was subsequently toured in North America, where it was performed no less than 11 times, including in Boston (Seiji Ozawa), Toronto (Andrew Davis), and Hartford (Michael Lankester). Also in 1995, Tippet published an autobiography, Those Twentieth Century Blues (1991), and a collection of essays, Tippett on Music, and made a personal contribution to the tricentenary of the death of Purcell in the form of Caliban’s Song, which went on to be included in the larger work, Tempest Suite, commissioned by the BBC.

In 1996, Tippett left the country home in Wiltshire where he had lived for 25 years, and moved to Isleworth in the south of London. In the same year, a new production of his opera The Midsummer Marriage was presented at Covent Garden. In November 1997, a major retrospective of Tippett’s concert music was presented in Stockholm. Soon after his arrival in the Swedish capital, the composer developed pneumonia, and was forced to return to London, where he died on 8 January 1998.