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Crown of the Year and Other Masterworks by Sir Michael Tippett at the Ryedale Festival

Aug. 28, 2025

Sir Michael Tippett's Crown of the Year and Words for Music Perhaps were performed on July 16 at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Pickering (UK) as part of the Ryedale Festival. These Tippet masterworks (and others) were performed alongside an assortment of works by Henry Purcell by sopranos Claire Booth and Rowan Pierce, countertenor Alexander Chance, reader Oliver Soden, and the Ryedale Festival Ensemble.

The concert, presented in association with The Michael Tippett Musical Foundation, offered a rare opportunity to hear one of Tippett’s best pieces – the joyful, beautiful and unaccountably neglected chamber cantata, Crown of the Year, described by Sir Andrew Davis as one of Tippett’s five greatest works, but not heard in the UK for decades. In this substantial work, the choir and instrumentalists take an equal role. Christopher Fry's wonderfully picturesque texts are imaginatively set by Tippett to create an illuminating description of the seasons.


Sir Michael Tippett/Crown of the Year: I. Prelude. Spring/Christ Church Cathedral Choir/Stephen Darlington, conductor

Words for Music Perhaps features a sequence of love poems by W.B. Yeats with incidental music by Michael Tippett for speaker(s) and ensemble. The work can be performed with one voice, as it was in this case, though the original BBC production used three speaking voices, one male and two female. Poems were chosen by Anthony Thwaite from Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. These poems come from two cycles: Words for Music Perhaps, and A Woman Young and Old.

To learn more about Sir Michael Tippett, visit schott-music.com.

Sir Michael Tippett
Crown of the Year (1958)
text (Eng) by Christopher Fry
cantata for chorus (SSA) and instruments
  I Prelude: Spring
  II Hush, nightingale
  III Refrain
  IV Prelude: Summer
  V Summer has a heart of drums · Refrain (repeated)
  VI Prelude: Autumn
  VII Victoria rules an autumn land · Refrain (repeated)
  VIII Prelude: Winter
  IX Hurle of the wind
descant recorder or flute.treble recorder (descant recorder) or flute.ob.Acl-tpt or cornet-2perc(crot, xyl, hand bells, small drum)-pno-str(1.1.1.1.0)
28'

Words for Music Perhaps (1959-1960)
for speaker and ensemble
text (Eng) from a sequence of love poems by W. B. Yeats
bcl-tpt-xyl.gong-pno-vn.vc
14'

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