Michael Tippett: A Child of our Time on CD

Michael Tippett (1905-1998)

A Child of our Time

Faye Robinson, Sarah Walker, Jon Garrison, John Cheek

CD (Compact Disc)

Conventional CD, playable with all CD players and computer drives, but also with most SACD or multiplayers.

deliverable within 2-3 weeks (if available from supplier)

Current price: EUR 14.99

Shipping (United States of America): EUR 19.90

Artists:: Faye Robinson, Sarah Walker, Jon Garrison, John Cheek, City of Birmingham Chorus & SO, Michael Tippett
Label:: Naxos
Year of recording ca.:: 1991
Item number:: 5909501
UPC/EAN:: 0747313257027
Release date:: 31.1.2005

Auch die Musik von Ein Kind unserer Zeit versöhnt und integriert scheinbare Gegensätze. Die Gesamtform des Werkes, so der Komponist selbst, erinnert an die dreiteilige Bearbeitung von Händels Messias, bei der der erste Teil aus "großen, aber allgemeinen Prophezeiungen", der zweite aus einer Erzählung und der dritte aus "Kommentar und Urteil" besteht. In diesem Rahmen gibt es spezifischere Reminiszenzen an Händels Oratorien und an Bachs Passionsvertonungen, etwa die Doppelrolle der Solisten als Figuren im Drama und als Kommentatoren, die chorischen "Massenszenen", darunter der Doppelchor der Verfolger und Verfolgten im zweiten Teil, die häufige Verwendung fugierter Texturen, die ständig wechselnden instrumentalen Farben aufeinanderfolgender Nummern oder Abschnitte und ganz offensichtlich die bekannten Akkorde der ersten Umkehrung, die die erzählerischen Rezitativpassagen des Solobasses ankündigen. Aber die musikalische Sprache des Werkes ist keineswegs zufällig: Es ist Tippetts eigene, erkennbar englische Sprache, vor allem in ihrem madrigalartigen Festhalten an den natürlichen Betonungen der Worte gegenüber dem darunter liegenden Puls, und gefärbt durch Anklänge an Jazz und populäre Musik wie den Tangorhythmus des Tenors "I have no money for my bread". Diese treffen auf halbem Wege auf eines der auffälligsten Merkmale des Werkes, die Negro Spirituals, die von Zeit zu Zeit eingeführt werden, um die Handlungen und Emotionen des Dramas zu kommentieren, in gleicher Weise wie die lutherischen Choräle in Bachs Passionen. Die Spirituals werden als Lieder der Opfer der Unterdrückung in einer anderen Generation und auf einem anderen Kontinent aufgenommen, und durch ihre Vertrautheit unterstreichen sie die Relevanz der Ereignisse, die Tippett beschreibt und kommentiert: Mehr als sechzig Jahre später ist der gequälte Junge immer noch "ein Kind unserer Zeit".

Product Information

The music of A Child of Our Time similarly reconciles and integrates apparent opposites. The overall form of the work, the composer himself said, recalls the tripartite arrangement of Handel’s Messiah, in which the first part consists of ‘great but general prophecies’, the second of narrative, and the third of ‘commentary and judgment’. Within this framework, there are more specific reminiscences of Handel’s oratorios and of Bach’s Passion settings, in such things as the dual rôles of the soloists as characters in the drama and commentators, the choral ‘crowd scenes’, among them the double chorus of persecutors and persecuted in Part Two, the frequent use of fugal texture, the constantly varying instrumental colours of successive numbers or sections, and most obviously the familiar first-inversion chords which herald the solo bass’s passages of narrative recitative. But the musical language of the work is by no means pastiche: it is Tippett’s own, recognisably English, especially in its madrigal-like adherence to the natural stresses of the words against the underlying pulse, and coloured by echoes of jazz and popular music such as the tango rhythm of the tenor’s ‘I have no money for my bread’. These go halfway to meet one of the most striking features of the work, the Negro spirituals which are introduced from time to time to comment on the actions and emotions of the drama, in the same way as the Lutheran chorales in Bach’s Passions. The spirituals are included as the songs of the victims of oppression in another generation and on another continent, and through their very familiarity they emphasize the relevance to us of the events Tippett describes and comments on: more than sixty years later, the anguished boy is still ‘a child of our time’.

Disk 1 von 1 (CD)

1 A Child of our Time: Part 1: The world turns on its dark side (Chorus)
2 A Child of our Time: Part 1: The Argument - Man has measured the heavens with a telescope (Alto)
3 A Child of our Time: Part 1: Interludium - Scena - Is evil then good? (Chorus and Alto)
4 A Child of our Time: Part 1: The Narrator - Now in each nation there were some cast out (Bass)
5 A Child of our Time: Part 1: Chorus of the Oppressed - When shall the usurers' city cease
6 A Child of our Time: Part 1: I have no money for my bread (Tenor)
7 A Child of our Time: Part 1: How can I cherish my man in such days (Soprano)
8 A Child of our Time: Part 1: A Spiritual - Steal away (Chorus and Soli)
9 A Child of our Time: Part 2: A star rises in mid-winter (Chorus)
10 A Child of our Time: Part 2: The Narrator - And a time came (Bass)
11 A Child of our Time: Part 2: Chorus of Persecutors and Persecuted - Away with them! (Double Chorus)
12 A Child of our Time: Part 2: The Narrator - Where they could, they fled from the terror (Bass)
13 A Child of our Time: Part 2: Chorus of the Self-righteous - We cannot have them in our Empire
14 A Child of our Time: Part 2: The Narrator - And the boy's mother wrote a letter (Bass)
15 A Child of our Time: Part 2: Scena - O my son! (Soloists)
16 A Child of our Time: Part 2: A Spiritual - Nobody knows the trouble I see, Lord (Chorus and Soli)
17 A Child of our Time: Part 2: Scena - The boy becomes desperate in his agony (Bass, Alto)
18 A Child of our Time: Part 2: The Narrator - They took a terrible vengeance (Bass)
19 A Child of our Time: Part 2: The Terror - Burn down their houses! (Chorus)
20 A Child of our Time: Part 2: The Narrator - Men were ashamed of what was done (Bass)
21 A Child of our Time: Part 2: A Spiritual of Anger - Go down, Moses (Chorus and Bass)
22 A Child of our Time: Part 2: The boy sings in his prison - My dreams are all shattered in a ghastly reality (Tenor)
23 A Child of our Time: Part 2: The Mother - What have I done to you, my son? (Soprano)
24 A Child of our Time: Part 2: The dark forces rise like a flood (Alto)
25 A Child of our Time: Part 2: A Spiritual - O, by and by (Chorus and Soprano)
26 A Child of our Time: Part 3: The cold deepens (Chorus)
27 A Child of our Time: Part 3: The soul of man is impassioned like a woman (Alto)
28 A Child of our Time: Part 3: Scena - The words of wisdom are these (Bass, Chorus)
29 A Child of our Time: Part 3: Preludium - I would know my shadow and my light (Chorus and Soli)
30 A Child of our Time: Part 3: A Spiritual - Deep river, my home is over Jordan (Chorus and Soli)