Michael Kemp Tippett

TIPPETT, (Sir) Michael Kemp. b. London, 2 January 1905; d. Isleworth, Middlesex, 8 January1998. Tippett was a man of exceptionally strong views and convictions, which emerged when he was a schoolboy. He left Fettes College in Edinburgh after trying to break the endemic cycle of bullying there and after admitting to a homosexual involvement. Then as a boarder at Stamford Grammar School, Lincolnshire, his lodgings in the town were put out-of-bounds to other boys because of his attempts to convert the school to atheism. If intellectually precocious he was musically a late developer, and after initial studies at the Royal College of Music with Charles Wood* and R.O. Morris between 1923-8 he...