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. The second movement appears more confidently notated, and although it contains a number of editorial queries to Michael Tillett, the beginning is more continuously developmental than the first movement, which is constructed from modules that are repeated in cycles and at various levels of transposition. Peter Cropper described the second movement as a long song with two light dance movements in the middle, to which Tippett added: 'It is tender and warm and it will make its effect after you have heard the first movement. The first movement is such a knockout!' Tippett first experimented with this technique in the second movement of the Second Symphony in which the 'stalagmites' provide some of the most memorable textures.
