ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that Michael Tippett saw hermaphrodism as enforced to some degree by societal conceptions of the artist and, although he does not say so here, perhaps of the homosexual too. It argues that the extent to which Tippett would have felt, inclined to embrace the view that psychic wholeness could be achieved as the result of the union of masculine and feminine elements in his psyche. The chapter explains the context in which hermaphrodism appears in Tippett's aesthetic views and personal opinions. It discusses the extent to which structures and symbols in Tippett's music can be analysed in such a manner as to suggest that his understanding of gender construction is played out within the field of the musical work. The chapter shows that his works, aesthetic views and personal opinions are elements within a larger discursive field, which reveals a constantly fluctuating construction, figuration and re-figuration of his own masculine identity.
