Born around a decade later than Sir Michael Tippett, I have attained an age which is seriously old, no longer qualifiable by some such euphemism as ‘elderly’. That Michael was my senior in years allowed me to be a disciple to his guruship, and I can remember – ‘as though it were yesterday’ instead of sixty years ago – the sense of a new dawn that his music awoke in me. In those distant days the two young composers in Britain who were endowed with indubitable genius were, of course, Britten and Tippett. I goggled at Britten's native talents and hope I didn't betray envy in dismissing them, even to myself, as ‘too clever by half’ – as did many people, perhaps understandably. But I recognised that I couldn't identify with Britten's gifts, which were truly exceptional, though not superhuman. As the years have passed I've come to think that Britten was the supreme musical genius of this British time and place, and to believe that his uncanny instinct for – rather than thought about – what mattered for him at this moment and the next was the most telling evidence of this genius.