The Symphony No. 2 by the British composer Michael Tippett was completed in 1957.
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The symphony is scored for 2 Flutes, (both doubling Piccolo), 2 Oboes, 2 Clarinets in A, 2 Bassoons, 4 Horns, 2 Trumpets, 3 Trombones, Tuba, Timpani, Percussion (1 Player): Side drum, Bass drum, Cymbals, Harp, Piano (doubling Celeste) and Strings.[1]
The symphony is in four movements, marked as follows:
In an insightful essay accompanying the first recording of the work, Tippett writes:
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 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; a song-form slow movement; a mirror-form scherzo in additive rhythm; a fantasia 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 commisioned the piece for the 10th anniversary of the Third Programme, but in the event I was a year late. It was performed first in the Royal Festival Hall, London in February 1958 and conducted by Sir Adrian Boult.[2]
The symphony is considered by some writers to be a transitional work,[3] marking a change from the abundant lyricism of works such as the opera The Midsummer Marriage and the Corelli Fantasia to a tauter, more austere style as represented by the opera King Priam 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 and non-tonal harmony: the chord on C referred to in the article above is a clear example of this, consisting of a compression of the chords 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-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; 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.[2]