Michael Tippett - A composer 'of our times'

The Knot Garden, first performed in 1970, falls into this latter category. It is fair to say that it's a slave to the fashion of the time. It's Tippett at his most woolly-headed, trying to say something musically about the 1960s cultural and social revolution simply so that he is not left behind.

As British music writer Conrad Wilson has noted, The Knot Garden deals with "seven characters a bearded psychiatrist, a civil engineer and his gardening wife, a black and white male gay couple, a disturbed adolescent and a female freedom fighter disfigured by torture who explored an emotional labyrinth in search of self-discovery and self-understanding".

The Midsummer Marriage and King Priam are, however, masterpieces. The former burst onto a rather stultified English opera scene in 1955 with its homage to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream as its primary setting, and its imaginative use of dance. The Midsummer Marriage explored the breaking down of class and the capacity of man to transcend rules to find true worth.

In King Priam, Tippett takes Homer's story in the Iliad of Priam, King of Troy, and his family to emphasise the inevitability of fate and that the perfect outcome is not always just around the corner. It's a tightly woven work, harsh and unforgiving in parts, but just as a block of stone has its own innate beauty before it is chiselled by the sculptor, so does the score of King Priam.

In Tippett's four symphonies, five string quartets and piano sonatas, the use of metaphor to unravel the mysteries and complexity of the universe are also apparent. In this Tippett was following in the footsteps of his two great heroes, Goethe and Beethoven. Like the latter, Tippett wanted to communicate a declaration through the musical form.

As Bowen points out, Tippett's String Quartet Number 5 takes as its model Beethoven's "Hymn of Thanksgiving" in the latter's famous Opus 132 quartet. In both Tippett and Beethoven there are slow mediative passages interspersed with rapid episodes, symbolising affirmation and light.

When Tippett died on January 8 1998, he could well be satisfied with his life. While his 25-year relationship with artist Karl Hawker had broken down in the 1970s, Tippett had travelled widely, befriended creative and political people around the globe and involved himself in causes such as the international peace movement.

His musical output is not always easy to play or listen to, but his importance as a composer lies in his capacity to experiment, to infuse old forms such as the opera and symphony with new life, and to use music as a tool of social change.

In a series of essays Tippett published in 1974, with the decidedly 1970s title of Moving into Aquarius, he noted that his role in society was "to continue an age-old tradition, fundamental to our civilisation, which goes back into prehistory and will go forward into the unknown future. This tradition is to create images from the depths of the imagination and to give them form whether visual, intellectual or musical. For it is only through images that the inner world communicates at all."

Tippett's contribution to musical culture was always ambitious, often flawed, but never lacking in integrity.

The Sydney Philharmonia Choir, conducted by Brett Weymark and featuring Kirsti Harms, Elizabeth Campbell, Jamie Allen and Michael Lewis will perform A Child of our Time on May 28, 29 at the Sydney Opera House.The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra will perform Tippett's Symphony No 4, with Mark Wigglesworth conducting, on June 2-4 at Hamer Hall.