Michael Tippett’s description of what drew him to the longer of W. B. Yeats’ two poems on Byzantium gives us a glimpse of what was going through his mind as the fascination of Byzantium as a mode of self-renewal becomes evident: ‘The crystalline intensity of the poem itself offered a challenge in setting its verbal imagery to music; [and] I identified completely with its emphasis on the notion of artefacts, enshrining values that can be set against the impermanence of the everyday world and the complexities of the human beating heart.’
(Michael Tippett)