MEIRION BOWEN - The Tippett Connection

Meirion Bowen fell in love with the music of Sir Michael Tippett as a schoolboy. But he only met the composer for the first time in 1963 at a BBC Radio performance of Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage. Their friendship developed from that point onwards and remained close right up until Tippett's death in January 8, 1998.

From 1974, Meirion Bowen acted as Tippett's personal assistant and manager, accompanying Tippett on professional tours - including three world tours - and acting as his principal adviser and consultant in relation all his affairs, both artistic and personal. The Tippett Office, initiated in 1979 to centralise and coordinate all the composer's public involvements and promote his music, continues under his supervision.

Sir Michael Tippett and Meirion Bowen
at rehearsal of The Mask of Time in Boston, April 1984

Sir Michael Tippett and Meirion Bowen in Africa

While carrying on an independent career as a musician, writer and lecturer, Meirion Bowen undertook the edition of two books of essays by Tippett and 'ghosted' his autobiography, Those Twentieth Century Blues (1991).Click here for more information.

His own study of Tippett's music, Michael Tippett (Robson Books, London), was first published in 1982 and is now available in a completely revised and update edition (1997).

He has also written numerous articles on Tippett and his works for a variety of international music magazines and journals. These include:

He is the dedicatee of Tippett's largest-scale composition for the concert-hall, The Mask of Time (1980-2).

The Mask of Time

Meirion Bowen's new version of Beethoven's opera, Fidelio, is dedicated to the memory of Sir Michael Tippett.

©Meirion Bowen

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