After a concert at London’s South Bank where Sir Charles Groves conducted a symphony by Michael Tippett, I was rather embarrassed to find the composer standing next to the conductor in the artist’s room. I cannot now see why I should have been surprised but my embarrassment was due to the fact that the symphony had made no impression on me whatsoever. On entering the room, both of them looked at me expectantly and I was rather hard put to know what to say. Luckily, I had recently read Tippett’s introduction to a volume of Bartók’s selected correspondence in English translation and rather than say something polite about the symphony, I congratulated the composer on his piece of writing.

A few years later, at the Bath Festival, I was genuinely taken with his opera, The Knot Garden (1966/69) and was happy to tell him so afterward. He must have been in his eighties, but had a boyish air about him, slim as he was, with a naughty smile in his eyes.

For many years, I used to receive a newsletter in the post devoted entirely to performances of Tippett’s music. At one point, the flow came to an abrupt stop, I fear because there was not enough material to fill it. Unlike Benjamin Britten, Tippett seems to have remained a national rather than an international figure.

I.

In the sense which you describe what Lutosławski told you concerning a piece of John Cage, I had something almost exactly the same when I was listening to a concert of modern music of some kind at the Edinburgh Festival and my vague recollection, not absolutely accurate, is that I heard a piano sonata played by some pianist that was Boulez. I am not dead sure this is correct—it would be very difficult to find out exactly what it was—nevertheless, what happened was a sudden understanding of something of this kind of piece which was extremely static, seemed to me to mean: start this process of invention by polarity. That is, I realized I could only use such a technique if I was able to put against it something very energetic and rapid.