Love Quote by Michael Tippett

Tippett starts by swatting away a familiar smear: that “modern music and modern art” are a “conspiracy” cooked up by insiders to bamboozle the public. That word choice is doing real cultural work. It evokes the heckler’s fantasy of a clique with a secret handshake, a charge that’s been leveled at everything from atonality to abstract painting: if I don’t feel it instantly, someone must be tricking me. Tippett doesn’t argue on technical grounds; he counters with moral language.

“Heart of hearts” is deliberately unscientific, almost pastoral. He’s not pretending modernism can be proved like a theorem. He’s staking a claim about intention and sincerity, shifting the debate from “Is this beautiful?” to “Is this honestly made?” The phrase “truth and integrity” recasts dissonance, difficulty, and experimentation as ethical acts rather than aesthetic provocations. That’s a savvy move for a composer who lived through a century when art was repeatedly asked to justify itself against mass entertainment, state propaganda, and the market’s demand for easy legibility.

The subtext is defensive, but not apologetic. Tippett grants one thing to the skeptics: modern art can be practiced dishonestly. His conditionals - “honestly, decently and with all their being” - imply there are frauds and careerists, and the public isn’t always wrong to sense opportunism. Still, he insists the core of the project isn’t to exclude audiences; it’s to pursue a kind of inner accuracy. Modern art, in his framing, isn’t a code to crack. It’s a conscience to listen for.