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Orchestra, choir and 4 soloists ad. lib. - Digital Download SKU: S9.Q21225 From the opera "The Midsummer Marriage". Composed by Sir Michael Tippett. This edition: study score. Choral music - Ernst Eulenburg - Score. Eulenburg Miniature Scores. Downloadable, Study score. Duration 29 minutes. Ernst Eulenburg & Co. GmbH - Digital #Q21225. Published by Ernst Eulenburg & Co. GmbH - Digital (S9.Q21225). English • German • French.Tippett’s decision to extract the four Ritual Dances from his opera 'The Midsummer Marriage' as a self-contained concert suite reflects the fact that the medium of dance was always present in his conception of the opera. From the start, there was to be an interaction within the opera between the real world and the world of mythology, partly Greek, partly Celtic. This mythological element culminates, in the finished opera, in the 'Ritual Dances' of Acts 2 and 3. Tippett himself described his opera as ‘a kind of elaborate 'L’après midi d’un faune’, in which the 'Ritual Dances' display a powerful sexual energy, though of a very different kind from Debussy’s voluptuous langour. Composition of The Midsummer Marriage occupied Tippett for six years from 1946 to 1952. The first performance of the Ritual Dances as a concert suite was given in Basel on 13 February 1953 by the Basel Kammerorchester conducted by Paul Sacher, and preceded the premiere of the complete opera by two years. Today the Ritual Dances rival the Concerto for Double String Orchestra (ETP 1331) as Tippett’s most widely-performed orchestral work. About Digital Downloads Digital Downloads are downloadable sheet music files that can be viewed directly on your computer, tablet or mobile device. Once you download your digital sheet music, you can view and print it at home, school, or anywhere you want to make music, and you don’t have to be connected to the internet. Just purchase, download and play! PLEASE NOTE: Your Digital Download will have a watermark at the bottom of each page that will include your name, purchase date and number of copies purchased. You are only authorized to print the number of copies that you have purchased. You may not digitally distribute or print more copies than purchased for use (i.e., you may not print or digitally distribute individual copies to friends or students).