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Those Twentieth-Century Blues: An Autobiography
The autobiography of one of Britain's greatest composers is as idiosyncratic as the man himself, revealing his insatiable curiosity about people and places, ideas and sensations, and music of every kind. Vigorous, brave, funny, candid about his sexual and emotional life, Sir Michael has written a remarkable, memorable book.
Paperback
,
304 pages
Published
July 7th 1994
by Pimlico
(first published 1994)
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Community Reviews
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Whatever I expected from Michael Tippett's autobiography, I didn't expect it to be, well,
funny
. The eighty-odd-year-old composer relates significant and trivial incidents in a kind of dotty impervious way which occasionally borders on the surreal. Musical studies, homosexual encounters, hairbreadth 'scapes by train, car and on foot through Europe to join his perpetually peregrinating parents. Once he was so ill he was hospitalised in Belgrade and for lack of space placed in the matron's bed - w
...more
On the minus side: he's not a writer - the sentences fall flat, prosaic. Maybe it's deliberate. He certain doesn't seem to want to go out of his way to embellish his story, or to show himself in a good light.
On the plus side: some fascinating insights into the musical life of the times, and into Tippett's relationship with Ben Britten.
On the plus side: some fascinating insights into the musical life of the times, and into Tippett's relationship with Ben Britten.
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