Biography
Michael Tippett was born on 2 January 1905 in London and studied composition, conducting and piano at the Royal College of Music from 1923 to 1928, among others with Reginald Owen Morris. A committed pacifist, he was sentenced in 1943 to several months in Wormwood Scrubs prison for refusing military service, where he took the opportunity to conduct the prison orchestra. He did not achieve his breakthrough until his forties, with the oratorio 'A Child of Our Time', one of the first classical works to incorporate African-American spirituals. He wrote all five of his operas, including 'The Midsummer Marriage' and 'The Ice Break', to his own librettos, his style evolving from the lush textures of his early work to a leaner, more angular idiom. He was knighted in 1966 and died on 8 January 1998 in London.
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