ABSTRACT
In 1982 the London Symphony Orchestra mounted a series of concerts devoted to the music of Tippett and Berlioz. This somewhat unlikely juxtaposition was celebrated on the BBC’s ‘Music Weekly’ programme, in which Michael Oliver asked Tippett how he first became aware of Berlioz as a composer: IPPETTI first saw references to him in a marvellous book on orchestration. The fugue from Tippett’s Second String Quartet has attracted little critical or analytical comment. This is perhaps surprising, given that the quartet has become something of a classic, but it is less so when one considers the nature of the work. Three writers have tackled the thorny issue of Tippett’s harmonic language. Ian Kemp, in his Tippett article in The New Grove, quotes part of the fugue from the Second Quartet to illustrate his point: While functional harmonic progression is not discarded, more characteristic is the use of harmony as a ‘colouring’, to achieve some expressive or dramatic purpose.
