Tuesday 13 October 2009

A snippet of Tippett 1

The Iron Awe team have started telling the story of Heartbreak Hill. Part of the story involves Sir Michael Tippett's first opera Robin Hood, with music that has not been heard for over seventy years.
God bless our valiant Robin Hood
And may he never swing,
Who fights the battles for the poor;
The outlaw shall be King.

Last night I sat in the Station Hotel Boosbeck with some of the Iron Awe team and local people, we were singing songs written in 1934 for the out of work ironstone miners of Boosbeck and their families, with the keyboard player reading music in Tippetts own hand, and playing it for the first time in seventy-five years.