Many of Tippett's works were composed, quite consciously, against a background (general, specific, or both) of existing music. For the Second Symphony, the general background is the disciplined, four-movement structure of a Beethoven Symphony, and the idiom of middle-period Stravinsky (e.g. Symphony in Three Movements), while Tippett himself has described the specific background thus: “About the time I was finishing The Midsummer Marriage I was sitting one day in a small studio of Radio Lugano, 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 Second Symphony. Vivaldi's pounding C's took on a kind of archetypal quality, as though to say: here is where we must begin… I knew them to be the beginning of a new orchestral work. I do not any longer remember the Vivaldi arpeggios, but four pounding bass C's are in fact the notes that begin the symphony – and they return at the end of the work. Their function is not so much to establish any key, but to act as a kind of point of departure and return.” The symphony was (notoriously; see section 5 below) first performed by Sir Adrian Boult and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London in February 1958.

sources

X  Rough pencil draft autograph score, in the British Library

A  Autograph score (ink fair copy, 1957), in the British Library

E  First edition of score, published by Schott in 1958

P  First edition of parts, taken from E but with many errors P may be distinguished from R by the number of pages: Str have 29.25.27.30.22

M  Miniature score (no date, but c.1970), taken from E, with some corrections but many (different) errors

R  Reprint (1979) of orchestral parts, copied from M, with few new errors; Str have 17.13.13.15.11 pages