The meaning of 'lateness': Mediations of work, self and society in Tippett's Triple Concerto

'Lateness' is a musicological concept relevant to Tippett's oeuvre - if app lied dialectically. His Triple Concerto (1978-9) is arguably the first work to reveal the 'late' trait of renewed lyricism and tonal transparency whic h together serve as an immanent critique of the fragmentation and dissonanc e of his second period (which began with King Priam). The co-presence of bo th sets of characteristics, whose synthesis is only partial, issues in a he terogeneity suggestive of a future social order in which the particular is not subsumed into the totality. This world-view sedimented in the musical s tructure constitutes a pluralism which invites comparison with, but may not be identical to, notions within postmodernism. Its paradigm may also have been distilled from the (problematic) social mediation of self which Tippet t would have experienced as a gay person.