Michael Tippett Quotes

#1. The blues are like the fugue in 18th century. It's probably the music that belongs most to our time.

Michael Tippett

#2. My true function within a society which embraces all of us is to continue an age-old tradition. This tradition is to create images from the depths of the imagination and to give them form, whether visual, intellectual or musical.

Michael Tippett

#3. Characters are an extreme form in Shakespeare's theater.

Michael Tippett

#4. Music is a performing art, as any Native American will tell you. It isn't there in the score.

Michael Tippett

#5. Shakespeare fascinated me. He hardly ever left the country. His imagination was worldwide though reading.

Michael Tippett

#6. Conductors don't suffer, they are part of the performance.

Michael Tippett

#7. The Greek sculptor - I don't think he was very different from any of us.

Michael Tippett

#8. Music is a performance and needs the audience.

Michael Tippett

#9. I think we're all pretty odd.

Michael Tippett

#10. The nearest figure to myself would be Shakespeare.

Michael Tippett

#11. Nature has different times.

Michael Tippett

#12. I am quite certain in my heart of hearts that modern music and modern art is not a conspiracy, but is a form of truth and integrity for those who practise it honestly, decently and with all their being.

Michael Tippett

#13. I'm outside the music I've made. I have no interest in it.

Michael Tippett

#14. This is something special. You can attempt to have a kind of non-living music.

Michael Tippett

#15. Music remains the most strange of the materials because we don't understand what happens when music moves you.

Michael Tippett

#16. Public notice does not necessarily accord with internal fulfilment.

Michael Tippett

#17. I've seldom become nostalgic or settled.

Michael Tippett

#18. When we use terms we get confused, yet we have no other way.

Michael Tippett

#19. Beethoven suppressed everything, his personal life disappeared until he was locked inside. That is a figure quite extreme.

Michael Tippett

#20. Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry.

Michael Tippett

#21. Shiva danced the world into existence ... that's a very nice thought.

Michael Tippett

#22. I remain a humanist. We are a very curious race.

Michael Tippett