A Child of our Time is an oratorio, scored for soloists, chorus, and orchestra. The history of its genesis is both fascinating and complex. As early as the years following World War I, Tippett had begun to plan out a musical work that would give voice to his empathy for the exploited and downtrodden. Further inspired by the terrible effects of unemployment in England in the 1930s, Tippett planned to write an opera on the theme of rejection. He considered the Easter Rising in 1916 in Dublin for his subject, but quickly abandoned the idea as too difficult to dramatize. By the mid-1930s, Tippett had decided to write an oratorio rather than an opera, but it was not until 1938 that he found the subject for his drama: the Nazi pogroms in Germany and Austria precipitated by the assassination of a German diplomat by a young Jew. The title of the oratorio was taken from German author Odon von Horvath's novel that recounts the bleak misfortunes of a young Nazi soldier who suffers for his compassion and idealism. While Tippett's inspiration for the text of the oratorio was derived from specific events in history, the work avoids direct reference to any particular historical moment: Tippett sought to create a drama that was timeless, rather than political—a work that spoke more generally to the harshness of human oppression.

After conceiving of the basic idea, Tippett asked T.S. Eliot to write a suitable libretto; Eliot refused, and so Tippett resolved to write the text himself. In its final form, the libretto contains a mixture of Jungian themes (inspired by Tippett's study of Jungian psychoanalysis) and Negro spirituals, whose emotional power and universality the composer found perfectly suited to the oratorio's theme.

Tippett studied the oratorios of Handel and Bach for inspiration, and he in fact borrowed one of Bach's chorales to form the backbone of his own oratorio. Primarily, however, A Child of our Time represents Tippett's desire to blend the essential qualities of Negro spirituals with features of his own style. The music, then, reflects the rhythmic and melodic style of the spirituals, but also Tippett's own complex harmonic language. In order to blend the contrasting idioms—the simple diatonic harmonies of the spirituals and Tippett's more chromatic, contrapuntal writing—Tippett chose a single melodic interval—the minor third—found frequently in the chosen spirituals, and used it as the motivic basis for the oratorio. In terms of overarching form, the work is in three parts, with an introductory orchestral prelude. Tippett follows the model of Bach and Handel by alternating sections of narrative recitative with more expansive choral pieces and solo arias.

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