Tippett, Sir Michael

In the 1930s, Tippett worked with the unemployed in the north of England, composing for them a short opera, Robin Hood. In 1940, he became director of music at Morley College, London, where Gustav Holst had taught three decades earlier. Tippett remained in the post until 1951. During World War II, he served a three-month jail term as a conscientious objector. The revelation of the destruction of European Jewry affected Tippett deeply, and he adapted his oratorio, A Child of Our...