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 ...