Sir John Tavener

• Born: January 28, 1944
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: November 12, 2013
• Place of death: Child Okeford, England

English classical composer

In his compositions, Tavener combines elements from religious practices, popular influences, and literary sources to achieve a highly spiritual and universal portrayal of beauty in music.

The Life

John Kenneth Tavener (TA-veh-nur) was the son of Kenneth and Muriel Tavener, and he descended from his namesake, the Tudor composer John Taverner. At a young age, Tavener showed talent as a pianist and an organist. With a music scholarship, he attended the Highgate School, where he studied keyboard and composition. In 1962 Tavener entered the Royal Academy of Music, intending to become a concert pianist. He instead studied composition with Sir Lennox Berkeley and David Lumsdaine. While pursuing his studies, Tavener served as a church organist; however, he did not intend to make the church his ultimate place of employment. In 1965 Tavener won the prestigious Prince Rainier of Monaco composition prize for his cantata, Cain and Abel, which premiered on a radio broadcast by the London Bach Society.

Tavener achieved fame with the 1968 premiere of The Whale, composed for the London Sinfonietta. In 1969 he became professor of composition at Trinity College, and he produced Celtic Requiem (the piece was admired by the Beatles, who convinced Apple Records to produce a recording). Events in Tavener’s personal life, including a brief marriage in 1974, caused agonizing dry spells in his compositional output, which led him to seek solace in faith. In 1977 he formally entered the Eastern Orthodox Church, which became a profound source of inspiration. During the 1980’s, Tavener was diagnosed with Marfan syndrome, which caused a stroke and heart abnormalities. At this point, his works became increasingly introspective. Tavener returned to the spotlight in 1989 when The Protecting Veil premiered at the Proms (summer concerts), successfully introducing his music to a wider audience. His personal life improved as well: around this time he began a close relationship with Mother Thekla, an Orthodox nun who mentored him, and in 1991, he married his second wife, Maryanna, with whom he had three children. Mother Thekla consoled him as he dealt with his mother’s death, and she urged him to continue composing. With the encouragement of his wife and Mother Thekla, Tavener’s career was resurrected. Greece became his second home, and in 1993 he received an Apollo Award from the Greek National Opera for his contributions to Greek culture, the first foreigner to receive this honor. His fiftieth birthday was commemorated in 1994 by the BBC’s Ikons Festival.

Tavener achieved international stature in 1997 through the broadcast performance of his composition Song for Athene at the close of Princess Diana’s funeral. In 2000 he was knighted, leading to an increase in overseas commissions. The most notable was Lamentations and Praises, written for the choral group Chanticleer, which earned Tavener a 2002 Grammy Award. Tavener went on to win the Ivor Novello Classical Music Award for 2005. The Beautiful Names, commissioned by Charles, Prince of Wales, premiered at Westminster Cathedral by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 2007. Tavener experienced a heart attack shortly afterward, and although his physical recovery took about four months, he felt blocked creatively for several years. . His last major work was The Death of Ivan Ilyich (premiered in June 2013), inspired by Russian author Leo Tolstoy's novella of the same name. The sixty-nine-year-old Tavener died at home in Child Okeford, Dorset, in November 2013. His Orthodox funeral was held at Winchester Cathedral and was attended by an estimated seven hundred people.

The Music

Tavener has always maintained a close association with religious music. As a child, he was profoundly affected by performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (1727), George Frideric Handel’s Solomon oratorio (1789), and Igor Stravinsky’s Canticum Sacrum (1955), musical experiences that he considered crucial to his formation as a composer. While Tavener’s inspirations vary widely, the unifying factor is the goal of expressing beauty and truth through music. His study of composition with Lumsdaine focused upon complicated avant-garde techniques, and Tavener eventually drifted away from contemporary technique in favor of a type of minimalism that reflects a profound sense of spirituality. His later works are sparse, making almost exclusive use of diatonic tonality, in contrast to the complex early works.

Early Works. Tavener’s early compositions were entirely improvised at the keyboard. As a student at Highgate, his works reflected an unusual mixture of influences, including Stravinsky, George Gershwin, Maurice Ravel, and Handel. Among the works completed at Highgate were a number of pieces written for the school orchestra. One of Tavener’s first significant works was Credo (1961), scored for tenor soloist, chorus, narrator, oboes, brass, and organ. As a student at the Royal Academy of Music, Tavener delighted in the frequent performance of his pieces, including an opera titled The Cappemakers (1964), based on two medieval mystery plays. Lumsdaine’s avant-garde influence is evident in Tavener’s use of aleatoric bells during Lazarus’s resurrection scene, a sound resource to which he would return in later works.

The Whale.The Whale, a piece commissioned for the inaugural concert of the London Sinfonietta, first brought the youthful Tavener into the spotlight. It is scored for soloists, chorus, orchestra, and tape, and it offers a creative retelling of the biblical story of Jonah. Tavener’s penchant for sonic experimentation resulted in the use of a striking variety of techniques in The Whale, such as lengthy opening narrative, jazz motifs, plainchant, fire-engine sounds, stomping, and shouting. The extraordinary conglomeration of techniques impressed audiences, and Tavener became an overnight success.

Celtic Requiem.The Celtic Requiem was another London Sinfonietta commission. It combines three different, yet traditional textual elements: the Latin mass of the dead, children’s rhymes and games that deal with the subject of death, and ancient Celtic poetry. This piece reflects Tavener’s exploration of religious traditions different from those of his childhood, and it first identified him as an artist with strong creative ties to spirituality. One musical technique featured in the Celtic Requiem is a sense of static composition, often sensed as harmonic motionlessness; this became an essential part of Tavener’s mature style.

The Lamb.The Lamb was Tavener’s first significantly popular composition after The Whale, and it has remained one of his most frequently performed works. It was written in one afternoon in 1982, as a birthday gift for his nephew. The text is William Blake’s poem of the same title, published in his 1789 book, Songs of Innocence and Experience. Scored for unaccompanied chorus, The Lamb contains numerous manipulations of an economic melodic idea set to simple harmonies and beautifully treated dissonances, all declaimed in homophonic texture.

The Protecting Veil.After his conversion to Orthodox Christianity, Tavener became interested in creating ikons—sacred objects—in music. When Russian Jewish cellist Steven Isserlis commissioned a work incorporating the qualities of Russian Orthodox music, the composer was eager for the chance to address a metaphysical subject. Like The Lamb, The Protecting Veil was written in an extremely short span of time. It is scored for solo cello and string orchestra, and it celebrates the Feast of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God. This feast was established by the Byzantine church in commemoration of the Virgin’s appearance in Constantinople around the year 900 to protect the citizens threatened by invasion. The cello’s lengthy melodic line, based on various chants sung for feasts in honor of the Virgin Mary, represents the voice of Mary. Tavener attempted to portray the essence of Mary’s compassion and power.

The Beautiful Names.The Beautiful Names was commissioned by the Prince of Wales, and it premiered in June, 2007, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, and tenor soloist John Mark Ainsley. The piece is a setting of the ninety-nine names of Allah from the Qur’ān, and it incorporates qualities of Sufism, Hinduism, and Buddhism through the use of traditional drums, Tibetan temple bowls, and gongs. Prior to the piece’s premiere, Tavener said that he structured the work based upon the sevenfold constitution of humanity described in Hindu philosophy, and the main sections of the work are arranged on three conjunct triads. In addition, there is little repetition of musical material or text in the entire piece. The Beautiful Names reflects Tavener’s increased interest in a universalist philosophy, which embraces all religious traditions as expressions of the spiritual realm.

Musical Legacy

Tavener never identified with a school of composition in his early years, though he could have followed numerous avant-garde composers who were already in or past their prime period of musical output. After much exploration of the possibilities, he discovered that the flamboyant qualities of avant-garde did not comply with his innate sense of religious creativity. As a result, Tavener spent nearly two decades gradually shedding the characteristics of his compositional training in order to create his unique aesthetic expression.

Critics occasionally denounced Tavener as a thoughtfully packaged product of popular culture, because of the attention his compositions received from royalty, celebrities, and pop stars. Admirers often compared Tavener to other mystic composers, such as Olivier Messiaen and Arvo Pärt, because his works evoke a similar intensity of spiritual feeling. Tavener's music was included in television segments, and he himself became the subject of several documentary films. Tavener will be remembered for his genius in combining an incongruous collection of compositional techniques and religious ideas in order to present a unified and moving portrait of universal experience.

Principal Works

choral works:Cain and Abel, 1966; Celtic Requiem, 1971; The Lamb, 1982; The Apocalypse, 1990; Ikon of the Nativity, 1991; Song for Athene, 1993; Lamentations and Praises, 2000; A New Beginning, 2000; The Veil of the Temple, 2003.

opera (music): Thérèse, 1979 (libretto by Gerard McLarnon); A Gentle Spirit, 1977; The Death of Ivan Ilyich, 2013.

orchestral works:The Whale, 1968 (for voice and orchestra); The Protecting Veil, 1989 (for cello and orchestra); Schuon Lieder, 2003; Laila (Amu), 2005; Fragments of a Prayer, 2006; The Beautiful Names, 2007; Requiem, 2008 (for voice and orchestra).

Bibliography

Dudgeon, Piers. Lifting the Veil: The Biography of Sir John Tavener. London: Portrait, 2003. This major biographical study focuses on the connections between Tavener’s life experiences and his musical output, and it is based on extensive interviews with the composer, his close collaborators, and his religious mentors. Includes select discography, photographs, and bibliography.

Haydon, Geoffrey. John Tavener: Glimpses of Paradise. London: Victor Gollancz, 1995. Biographical information is organized as small vignettes, following the completion of Haydon’s second major film on Tavener. Includes a chronological list of compositions, photographs, and select discography.

"Obituary: Sir John Tavener." BBC News, 12 Nov. 2013, www.bbc.com/news/uk-10881314. Accessed 27 Dec. 2017.

Stewart, Michael J. "Sir John Tavener Obituary." The Guardian, 12 Nov. 2013, www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/12/john-tavener. Accessed 27 Dec. 2017.

Tavener, John. “Celtic Requiem: An Introduction.” The Musical Times 110, no. 1517 (July, 1969): 736-737. A detailed description of the genesis and symbolism of Tavener’s Celtic Requiem, prior to its premiere by the London Sinfonietta.

Tavener, John. The Music of Silence: A Composer’s Testament. Edited by Brian Keeble. London: Faber & Faber, 1999. This autobiography offers a description of Tavener’s compositional processes and his personal philosophies, with in-depth commentaries on selected works. Includes a chronological list of compositions, photographs, and select discography.

Tavener, John, and Malcolm Crowthers. “All at Sea? On the Eve of the Barbican Festival Devoted to His Music, John Tavener Talks to Malcolm Crowthers About the Sea, Bells, Religion, and Life in Greece.” The Musical Times 135, no. 1811 (January, 1994): 9-14. In an interview, Tavener discusses several lesser-known works that were performed at the 1994 festival of his music, organized by the BBC.

Tavener, John, and Mother Thekla. Ikons: Meditations in Words and Music (A Fount Book). London: HarperCollins, 1994. A personal devotion or meditation book written by Tavener, with the aid of Mother Thekla. Includes a companion compact disc featuring some of Tavener’s music.