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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Michael Tippett
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(1905–98, kt 1966) Composer who started late but whose career has extended into a very productive old age. He began to establish a reputation with his Concerto for Double String Orchestra (1939), and secured it two years later with what remains his best-known work – the oratorio A Child of our Time (1941), an impassioned protest against tyranny and persecution (inspired by an outburst of anti-Semitic violence in 1938). This oratorio had a text by Tippett himself, as have his operas. The first was The Midsummer Marriage (1955), followed by King Priam (1962), The Knot Garden (1970) and The Ice Break (1977); a constant theme, consciously developed from Mozart, was reconciliation.
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His most recent opera was New Year (1989), a space-age fable. One of his most popular instrumental works is the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli (1953), commissioned for the Edinburgh Festival to celebrate the tercentenary of Corelli's birth. Tippett was also well known for his commitment to pacifism, which brought him a jail sentence of three months in World War II when he refused to comply with the conditions for exemption from active service.
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