In the late 1990s little justification is needed for a book on Michael Tippett–a composer who in his own lifetime attained a canonical position in British music and prominence internationally. However, it is perhaps surprising that despite the levels of institutional recognition accorded him, Tippett (1905–98) has not been the subject of more widespread scholarly attention. For example, while the period between approximately his seventy-fifth and eightieth birthday years saw the publication of what still remain key texts on the composer–including most notably Ian Kemp's substantial monograph, Arnold Whittall's extensive technical investigation of Tippett's (as well as Britten's) œuvre and Meirion Bowen's introductory volume – no new comparable book-length studies materialised as the composer approached and entered his nineties. Against this background, then, Tippett Studies will, I hope, be seen as a timely venture. The essays below, the work both of established commentators and of new contributors to discourse on Tippett, can be claimed collectively to represent a significant expansion of research on the composer. Many of the studies were originally presented as papers at the Newcastle University International Tippett Conference in 1995, and the volume as a whole continues the philosophy of that event: to offer new perspectives on Tippett, while re-assessing and building on existing scholarship.

In a heterogeneous compilation such as this it would of course be gratuitous to make claims for a neat overall structure.