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Michael Tippett: A Child of Our Time (2015) CD Album 

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A Child of Our Time is a secular oratorio by the British composer Michael Tippett (1905–1998), 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 affected Tippett profoundly: the assassination in 1938 of a German diplomat by a young Jewish refugee, and the Nazi government's reaction in the form of a violent pogrom against its Jewish population: Kristallnacht. Tippett's oratorio deals with these incidents in the context of the experiences of oppressed people generally, and carries a strongly pacifist 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 writing the work.

The oratorio uses a traditional three-part format based on that of Handel's Messiah, and is structured in the manner of Bach's Passions. The work's most original feature is Tippett's use of African-American spirituals, which carry out the role allocated by Bach to chorales. Tippett justified this innovation on the grounds that these songs of oppression possess a universality absent from traditional hymns. A Child of Our Time was well received on its first performance, and has since been performed all over the world in many languages. A number of recorded versions are available, including one conducted by Tippett when he was 86 years old.

TRACK LISTING 

1 The World Turns On Its Dark Side

2 Man Has Measured the Heavens

3 Is Evil Then Good?

4 Now in Each Nation - When Shall the Userer's City Cease

5 I Have No Money for My Bread

6 How Can I Cherish My Man in Such Days...Steal Away

7 A Star Rises in Mid-winter

8 And a Time Came

9 O My Son!

10 Nobody Knows the Trouble I See

11 The Boy Becomes Desperate in His Agony

12 They Took a Terrible Vengeance

13 Go Down, Moses

14 My Dreams Are All Shattered

15 What Have I Done to You, My Son?...O, By and By

16 The Cold Deepens

17 The Soul of Man

18 The Words of Wisdom Are These

19 I Would Know My Shadow and My Light

20 Deep River