The Long LineThe Long Line

Michael Tippett

A Child of Our Time

Oratorio

Composed 1939 Vocal

A Child of Our Time is a secular oratorio by the British composer Michael Tippett, who also wrote the libretto. Composed between 1939 and 1941, it was first performed at the Adelphi Theatre, London, on 19 March 1944. The work was inspired by events that profoundly affected Tippett: the assassination of a German diplomat by a young Jewish refugee in 1938, and the Nazi government's reaction to the assassination which was in the form of a violent pogrom against Germany's Jewish population: Kristallnacht. Tippett's oratorio deals with these incidents in the context of the experiences of all oppressed people, and it carries a strongly pacifistic message of ultimate understanding and reconciliation. The text's recurrent themes of shadow and light reflect the Jungian psychoanalysis which Tippett underwent in the years immediately before he wrote the work.

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Movements

  1. Part I: Chorus: "The world turns on its dark side"
  2. Part I: The Argument "Man has measured the heavens"; Orchestral Interludium
  3. Part I: Scena "Is evil then good?"
  4. Part I: "Now in each nation there were some cast out"
  5. Part I: Chorus of the Oppressed "When shall the usurer's city cease?"
  6. Part I: "I have no money for my bread"
  7. Part I: "How can I cherish my man?"
  8. Part I: A Spiritual "Steal Away"
  9. Part II: Chorus: "A star rises in midwinter"
  10. Part II: The Narrator "And a time came"
  11. Part II: Double Chorus of Persecutors and Persecuted "Away with them!"
  12. Part II: The Narrator "Where they could, they fled"
  13. Part II: Chorus of the Self-righteous "We cannot have them in our Empire"
  14. Part II: The Narrator "And the boy's mother wrote"
  15. Part II: Scena "O my son!"
  16. Part II: A Spiritual "Nobody knows the trouble I see"
  17. Part II: Scena: "The boy becomes desperate"
  18. Part II: The Narrator "They took a terrible vengeance"
  19. Part II: The Terror "Burn down their houses!"
  20. Part II: The Narrator "Men were ashamed"
  21. Part II: A Spiritual of Anger "Go down, Moses"
  22. Part II: The Boy Sings in his Prison "My dreams are all shattered"
  23. Part II: The Mother "What have I done to you, my son?"
  24. Part II: "The dark forces rise"
  25. Part II: A Spiritual "O by and by"
  26. Part III: Chorus "The cold deepens"
  27. Part III: "The soul of man"
  28. Part III: Scena "The words of wisdom"
  29. Part III: General Ensemble "I would know my shadow and my light"
  30. Part III: A Spiritual "Deep river"

Recommended recordings

Elsewhere

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