ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a detailed account of the events leading up to and throughout the compositional process associated with Michael Tippett's Fifth String Quartet and a comprehensive analysis of the entire quartet. It examines in greater detail Tippett's process of transmutation. Tippett's manuscripts contain an abundance of information about the compositional process as a cognitive activity. These manuscripts demonstrate that while he drew inspiration from T. S. Eliot's and Yeats's methods, Tippett's creative decisions were contemplative and deliberate. Meirion Bowen once remarked that the Fifth String Quartet 'sounds as if conjured rather than calculated', and Tippett's sketchbooks and manuscripts contain evidence supporting such a claim. On T. S. Eliot's advice, Tippett began a close study of Yeats, and he eventually reached a point where he 'knew it all nearly as well as [he] had known Eliot'. The creation of the autonomous artefact did not come naturally or immediately to Tippett.
