He was one of the greatest British composers of the 20th century and a staunch pacifist who spent two months in Wormwood Scrubs as a conscientious objector to the second world war.
Now a previously unpublished letter written by Sir Michael Tippett in 1943 from his prison cell has been discovered and donated to the British Library.
On four pages of official Wormwood Scrubs paper, he had written a 1,500-word letter in which he confided to a close friend that he had been changed by the experience of prison and that “to some extent a new ‘me’ will replace the old”.
Oliver Soden, Tippett’s biographer, said: “It’s a fascinating letter, not only in what it reveals about Tippett’s character, but in its portrait of life for a conscientious objector in the prison, and in the practicalities it lists – a great combination of everyday detail and philosophical/musical musing. I’d say it’s the best single discovery relating to Tippett of the last 50 years.”
Tippett, who died in 1998, aged 93, wrote five operas, including The Midsummer Marriage, among other compositions described by one critic as “worthy of comparison” to Beethoven and Stravinsky. He is best known for his anti-war masterpiece A Child of Our Time.
Soden’s award-winning book, titled Michael Tippett: The Biography, was published in 2019, and Soden chairs the Michael Tippett Musical Foundation, the charitable trust established by the composer.
In the 1970s, four letters that Tippett wrote from within prison were released for the first time. Soden said: “I had always suspected there was a ‘missing’ letter, which should have been written on 2 August as prisoners were allowed to write once a fortnight – and so it proves. It’s an amazing thing to have just turned up.”
He was taken aback to realise that it was discovered 80 years to the day after Tippett’s imprisonment on 21 June 1943. It was among the papers of Tippett’s goddaughter, Stella Maude, who died last year. Her mother, Evelyn, was its recipient. It was found by her granddaughter, Alice Nissen.
Tippett was sentenced to three months in prison, but a month was taken off for good behaviour. Although he had been handcuffed to a murderer on being sent down, his letter does not suggest that prison life was arduous.
Aged 38, he referred to fellow prisoners, noting that “the young conchies [conscientious objectors] take me for 26 or so,” adding: “I’m astonishingly neutral here and able to contact anyone.”
He wrote of reading a “V good” book on the writer Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, but musical inspiration was not flowing: “The symphony does not move overtly very much and I don’t force it.”
While prisoners were not allowed to receive clothes, he gave detailed instructions for supplies that he wanted his friend to pick up from his home: everything from his “coloured-handle toothbrush” to his “tennis-shoes with toe-holes” and his “black shoes, rubber-soled, for walking (only V best here with me)”. He was planning a holiday to Cornwall, for which he may have wanted those items.
The letter also reveals his closeness to fellow composer Benjamin Britten. He wrote of plans to “breakfast and bath at Ben’s” and to “change [at his home] from my suit after the concert”.
All correspondence was read by prison authorities, but Soden doubts that the prison censor was responsible for an intriguing physical cut. He wonders whether its recipient objected to “a mention of one of Tippett’s male lovers or something inappropriate”.
In one passage, Tippett wrote about booking a holiday with young men, one of whom he fancied, noting the panic of arranging a double bed in the hotel.
Soden has been struck by the letter’s “self-scrutiny”. He said: “If prison took a toll on him, it was oddly positive, this sense that he’d found his community of outcasts in the war and that there’ll be … a new me when he comes out of the prison.”
Tippett wrote: “I dare say the enforced stoppage will have been a V real gain.”
After contacting Soden about the letter, the family has donated it to the British Library.
Chris Scobie, its lead curator of music manuscripts, said: “We are delighted that this letter has come to light, filling in a crucial gap in the letters written by Tippett while imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs as a conscientious objector. Tippett was limited to a single correspondent and one letter a fortnight … The newly acquired letter completes the set … painting a vivid picture of someone impatient to return to their life outside of prison.”
