Books about Tippett and his Music
Meirion Bowen. Michael Tippett, 2nd edition. London: Robson Books, 1997.*
Kenneth Gloag and Nicholas Jones (eds). The Cambridge Companion to Michael Tippett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ian Kemp. Tippett: The Composer and his Music (1984). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.*
David Matthews. Michael Tippett: An Introductory Study. London: Faber and Faber, 1980.*
NEW: Roger Savage. The Pre-history of ‘The Midsummer Marriage’: Narratives and Speculations. London: Routledge, 2020.
Thomas Schuttenhelm. The Orchestral Music of Michael Tippett: Creative Development and the Compositional Process. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Oliver Soden. Michael Tippett: The Biography. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2019.
*= out of print
Oliver Soden's major biography of Michael Tippett was published in April 2019 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Acclaimed as Winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society Storytelling Award 2019 and shortlisted for the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, it is available in hardback, as a Kindle edition, and in paperback.
www.oliversoden.co.uk/michael-tippett-the-biography.html
Roger Savage, Professor Emeritus of Edinburgh University, has recently published his monograph The Pre-history of ‘The Midsummer Marriage’, which is available from all the usual outlets in hardback, paperback or (most affordably) a Kindle edition. Drawing on extensive research in unpublished sketchbooks and correspondence held at the British Library, it charts the early collaborative phase in the making of Tippett’s first mature opera, and reveals the extent to which the scenario and libretto, Tippett’s own, were the result of collaboration with the poet Douglas Newton.