Back to the Future

I suppose it was just a coincidence that I opened the score of Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time the morning after the EU referendum. The chorus’ opening words stared out at me, stark and bleak: ‘The world turns on its dark side.’

‘Our time,’ indeed.

Tippett started writing his oratorio in 1939 – on the day that Britain declared war on Germany. A confirmed pacifist, his work was a response to the fascism and European disunity of the time. A text that includes lines such as ‘Away with them! Curse them! They infect the state! We cannot have them in our empire. They shall not work nor draw a dole. Let them starve in No-Man’s-Land!’ is terrifying within its historical context, but in today’s climate it is profoundly depressing too. It feels like the last 75 years never happened.

Economic depression in the 1930s hardened views on both extremes of the political divide. An intense cocktail of nationalism, social deprivation, inequality, ignorance, and fear exploded with what now seem inevitable consequences. For decades we have listened to A Child of Our Time as a reminder, a lesson we may have liked to imagine we had learnt. But despite Tippett making it abundantly clear that his piece is an attack on racial prejudice, bigotry, and xenophobia wherever it occurs, it seems we have been complacent in ignoring its warnings.

The piece is structured around the singing of five traditional Negro spirituals. On paper, placing them in the context of Tippett’s own contemporary language should not work. But it does, incredibly movingly, because at the very deepest level our appreciation of these songs shows that we are all, in the most fundamental sense, equal. We share far more than separates us. The music reveals this connection, and to resist it is to deny the very essence of humanity. Tippett’s inspiration was realizing that the spirituals convey a significance beyond their origin as 19th-century American slave songs, and that their music transcends time and place to poignantly unite the two extremes of the human condition: desolation and hope.

Classical composers range from the realistic to the idealistic. Some write music as a reflection of the world around them, others offer a more utopian vision. Most of us live hovering somewhere between the two, neither giving in with passive acceptance, nor grasping dewy-eyed at the unattainable. A Child of Our Time urges us to feel empathy for everyone and expresses the need for us to try and understand humankind’s ability to be selfish, prejudiced, and mean, without losing faith in our limitless potential to be considerate, compassionate, and loving. Tippett challenges us to understand those who disagree with us if we want to change their minds: ‘I would know my shadow and my light, so shall I at last be whole. Then courage, brother. Dare the grave passage. Here is no final grieving, but an abiding hope.’

But is hope is enough? We live in a ‘me’ society. We communicate predominantly with ‘I’- gadgets. We exist in social bubbles, clouds in which we can instantly ‘unfriend’ or cease to ‘follow’ anyone we do not agree with. It is not conducive to debate, tolerance, understanding, or compassion. The most ‘connected’ society of all time is, in a sense, the most disconnected. People can be very cruel to one another, and when offered the opportunity to do so anonymously reveal a fundamental darkness within. We do not have to own our opinions any more, still less their consequences.

Humanity feels more divided than ever. Yet humanity is always the solution. Ultimately the only solution. In bleak times, one looks for light. The younger generation fundamentally supports global collaboration, an understanding that together is stronger than alone. They are the children of our time. And they deserve more than hope. They deserve leadership. They deserve action that reflects their future, not our past – a past that, even if it ever existed, can never be restored.

It is naïve to think that classical music can provide such action. It can build bridges, but only if the side it wants to reach is listening. To be frank, it is unlikely there are many Guardian-reading Tippett lovers who have opinions Tippett would like to affect! Music’s power to change lives depends on which lives are hearing it in the first place. Current events will make tonight’s* performance of A Child of Our Time more accessible and its message more meaningful, but unless the audience and performers are sufficiently moved to take that meaning away with them and use it to try and create change themselves, the music itself will have a hollow resonance.

In historical terms 75 years is clearly nothing – this piece proves that very well. But cultural evolution depends on someone saying that it doesn’t have to be like this. If music can inspire more people to say that, then it does have a purpose. It is a means to an end. The end is up to us.

This article was written for The Guardian, July 2016

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