The Symphony No. 2 by the British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 Michael Tippett

Michael Tippett

Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was an English composer.In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music...

 was completed in 1957.

Instrumentation

The symphony

Symphony

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...

 is scored for 2 Flutes, (both doubling Piccolo

Piccolo

The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...

), 2 Oboes, 2 Clarinets in A, 2 Bassoons, 4 Horns

Horn (instrument)

The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....

, 2 Trumpets, 3 Trombones, Tuba

Tuba

The tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece. It is one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra, first appearing in the mid-19th century, when it largely replaced the...

, Timpani

Timpani

Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...

, Percussion (1 Player): Side drum, Bass drum

Bass drum

Bass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...

, Cymbals, Harp

Harp

The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...

, Piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

 (doubling Celeste

Celesta

The celesta or celeste is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. Its appearance is similar to that of an upright piano or of a large wooden music box . The keys are connected to hammers which strike a graduated set of metal plates suspended over wooden resonators...

) and Strings

String section

The string section is the largest body of the standard orchestra and consists of bowed string instruments of the violin family.It normally comprises five sections: the first violins, the second violins, the violas, the cellos, and the double basses...

.

Form

The symphony is in four movements, marked as follows:

• 1. Allegro vigoroso
• 2. Adagio molto e tranquillo
• 3. Presto veloce
• 4. Allegro moderato

History

In an insightful essay accompanying the first recording of the work, Tippett writes:

About the time I was finishing 'The Midsummer Marriage

The Midsummer Marriage

The Midsummer Marriage is an opera in three acts, with music and libretto by Michael Tippett. The work's first performance was at Covent Garden, 27 January 1955, conducted by John Pritchard...

' I was sitting one day in a small studio of Radio Lugano

Lugano

Lugano is a city of inhabitants in the city proper and a total of over 145,000 people in the agglomeration/city region, in the south of Switzerland, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, which borders Italy...

, looking out over the sunlit lake, listening to tapes of Vivaldi. Some pounding cello and bass C's, as I remember them, suddenly threw me from Vivaldi's world into my own, and marked the exact moment of conception of the 2nd Symphony. Vivaldi's pounding C's took on a kind of archetypal quality as though to say; here is where we must begin. The 2nd Symphony does begin in that archetypal way, though the pounding C's are no longer Vivaldi's. At once horns in fifths with F sharps force the ear away from the C ground. I don't think we ever hear the C's as classically stating the key of C. We only hear them as a base. or ground upon which we can build, or from which we can take off in flight. When the C's return at the end of the Symphony, we feel satisfied and the work completed, though the final chord which is directed to 'let vibrate in the air', builds up from the bass C thus: C16 C8 G C4 D2 AC[sharp]E.



It was some years after the incident in Lugano before I was ready to begin composition. While other works were being written I pondered and prepared the Symphony's structure: a dramatic sonata allegro

Sonata form

Sonata form is a large-scale musical structure used widely since the middle of the 18th century . While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement...

; a song-form slow movement; a mirror-form scherzo

Scherzo

A scherzo is a piece of music, often a movement from a larger piece such as a symphony or a sonata. The scherzo's precise definition has varied over the years, but it often refers to a movement which replaces the minuet as the third movement in a four-movement work, such as a symphony, sonata, or...

 in additive rhythm

Additive rhythm

In music, additive and divisive are terms used to distinguish two types of both rhythm and meter.A divisive rhythm is a rhythm in which a larger period of time is divided into smaller rhythmic units or, conversely, some integer unit is regularly multiplied into larger, equal units; this can be...

; a fantasia

Fantasia (music)

The fantasia is a musical composition with its roots in the art of improvisation. Because of this, it seldom approximates the textbook rules of any strict musical form ....

 for a finale. Apart from the rather hazy memory of the Vivaldi C's, I wrote down no themes or motives during this period. I prefer to invent the work's form in as great a detail as I can before I invent any sounds whatever But as the formal invention proceeds, textures, speeds, dynamics, become part of the formal process. So that one comes closer and closer to the sound itself until the moment when the dam breaks and the music of the opening bars spills out over the paper. As I reached this moment in the Symphony the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 commisioned the piece for the 10th anniversary of the Third Programme

BBC Third Programme

The BBC Third Programme was a national radio network broadcast by the BBC. The network first went on air on 29 September 1946 and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces in Britain, playing a crucial role in disseminating the arts...

, but in the event I was a year late. It was performed first in the Royal Festival Hall

Royal Festival Hall

The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,900-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge. It is a Grade I listed building - the first post-war building to become so protected...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in February 1958 and conducted by Sir Adrian Boult

Adrian Boult

Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...

.

Musical analysis

The symphony is considered by some writers to be a transitional work, marking a change from the abundant lyricism of works such as the opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 The Midsummer Marriage

The Midsummer Marriage

The Midsummer Marriage is an opera in three acts, with music and libretto by Michael Tippett. The work's first performance was at Covent Garden, 27 January 1955, conducted by John Pritchard...

and the Corelli Fantasia

Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli

Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli, also known as the Corelli Fantasia, is a work for string orchestra by the British composer Michael Tippett...

 to a tauter, more austere style as represented by the opera King Priam

King Priam

King Priam is an opera by Michael Tippett, to his own libretto. The story is based on Homer's Iliad, except the birth and childhood of Paris, which are taken from the Fabulae of Hyginus.The premiere was on 29 May 1962, at Coventry...

and the second Piano Sonata of 1962. In these works the forward thrust of the classical sonata allegro is replaced by a new fragmentation using the juxtaposition of strongly contrasting blocks of material. Another distinct change is the increased use of polytonality

Polytonality

The musical use of more than one key simultaneously is polytonality . Bitonality is the use of only two different keys at the same time...

 and non-tonal harmony

Tonality

Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...

: the chord on C referred to in the article above is a clear example of this, consisting of a compression of the chord

Chord (music)

A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...

s of C, D and A in one vertical alignment.

Here is Tippett's own description of the work:

One of the vital matters to be decided in the period of gestation before composition, is the overall length; and then the kind of proportions that best fit this length. The Symphony takes about 35 minutes to play and its four movements are tolerably equal, though the slow movement is somewhat longer than the others. So it is not a long, spun-out rhapsodic work, but a short, concentrated dramatic work. And this concentration, compression even, is made clear from the word go.

The opening sonata allegro makes big dramatic gestures above the pounding, opening C's, and is driven along and never loiters. It divides itself into fairly equal quarters: statement, first argument, re-statement, second argument and coda. the lyrical quality of the slow movement is emphasised by presenting the 'song' of the song-form (after a short introduction) at first on divided cellos and later on divided violins. In between lies a lengthy and equally lyrical passage for all the string body. The woodwind and brass accompany the 'songs' with cluster-like chords decorated by harp and piano.The movement ends with a tiny coda for the four horns, a sound I remembered from the 'Sonata for Four Horns' which I had already written.

The scherzo is entirely in additive rhythm. Additive rhythm means simply that short beats of two quavers and long beats of three quavers are added together indefinitely in an a continuous flow of unequal beats. The movement has been called an 'additive structure', which I think very well describes it. At the central point heavy long beats are contrasted against light short beats in a kind of tour de force of inequality issuing in a climax of sound with brilliante trumpets to the foe. the movement then unwinds, via a cadenza

Cadenza

In music, a cadenza is, generically, an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist or soloists, usually in a "free" rhythmic style, and often allowing for virtuosic display....

-like passage for piano and harp alone to its end.

The finale is a fantasia in that its four sections do not relate to each other, like the four sections of the first movement sonata allegro, but go their own way. Section 1 is short and entirely introductory; section 2 is the longest and is a close-knit set of variations on a ground

Ostinato

In music, an ostinato is a motif or phrase, which is persistently repeated in the same musical voice. An ostinato is always a succession of equal sounds, wherein each note always has the same weight or stress. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody in...

; section 3 is a very long melody which begins high up on violins and goes over at half-way to cellos who take the line down to their bottom note, the C of the original pounding C's'; section 4 is a coda of five gestures of farewell.