Sir John Tavener obituary
Leading composer who drew upon his faith to create works of universal appeal
For the composer John Tavener,
who has died aged 69, creativity sprang from religious faith. Many of
his works held an appeal for audiences that did not necessarily identify
with contemporary music or the theological values from which he
started. However, their response meant a great deal to him: he took
their engagement as an affirmation that his music was operating on a
spiritual level.
It took until halfway through Tavener's career for him to receive substantial recognition. This came with The Protecting Veil (1989), the "icon in sound" for cello and strings inspired by the Mother of God and premiered at the BBC Proms by Steven Isserlis. The soloist found it to be "a gorgeous, romantic piece of music; the first performance was one of the highlights of my concert life", and his 1992 recording was a bestseller. Five years later, Tavener achieved global celebrity when his Song for Athene (1993) closed the funeral service for Diana, Princess of Wales, televised from Westminster Abbey.
In the closing minutes of the old millennium, the impact of the choral work A New Beginning was somewhat lost in the festivities that took place in the dome now known as the O2, on the Thames at Greenwich. Nonetheless, the year 2000 brought Tavener a knighthood, a festival of his music at the Southbank Centre, London, and the first performance of Fall and Resurrection, exploring the characteristic themes of the end of the world and paradise. Tavener's use of instruments such as the ram's horns, nay flute and kaval (both forms of folk flute) saw him pushing the boundaries of his vision ever closer to the east and to eastern religions, another characteristic impulse.
The work was dedicated to the Prince of Wales, with whom Tavener formed a lasting friendship. Prince Charles became a generous supporter of his music, especially his explorations of the universalist approach to religion that the two men shared.
Despite ongoing health problems, Tavener was in demand, and responded prolifically. The events of 9/11 made him more acutely aware of the dangers of religious dogmatism. In a letter to the Times after the atrocity, Tavener urged world leaders to read the 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi, whose saying "sell cleverness, buy wonder" reflected what he was trying to achieve with his music.
He took a huge risk with the seven-hour vigil The Veil of the Temple (2003) at the Temple church in London, but this listening marathon was received with great enthusiasm by critics and public alike. It was the first large-scale expression of his universalism; the work that truly embraced this outlook was his hour-long song cycle Schuon Lieder (2004) for soprano, string quartet, piano and four Tibetan temple bowls. Despite its overall length, this is a masterpiece of miniature writing, setting 19 texts. Tavener told me that he felt particularly proud of it, not only because of the direction in which it was taking him, but also because of the beauty of the verse by the metaphysical poet and philosopher Frithjof Schuon.
Never afraid of controversy, Tavener found it head-on with The Beautiful Names (2007), a meditation on the 99 names of Allah which was given its premiere in Westminster Cathedral, much to the consternation of many Catholics, who staged an open-air demonstration before the performance. Nonetheless, the work was warmly received, and the critic Robert Maycock observed that "if Tavener were to write nothing else, this would surely stand as a summation of what he has tried to achieve".
Tavener was born in Wembley Park, north-west London, the elder of two sons. His Presbyterian parents, Kenneth and Muriel, who ran a family building firm, gave him a religious upbringing and nurtured his musical talents. He began composing and studying the piano at an early age, and gained a music scholarship to Highgate school, north London.
Two early encounters had a profound effect: a performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute – for Tavener the only opera that transcended western tradition – at Glyndebourne, and Stravinsky's Canticum Sacrum. He studied for a time with the pianist Solomon, and entered the Royal Academy of Music. Stage nerves deterred him from performance, and he was encouraged as a composer by Lennox Berkeley. However, it was from a fellow student, David Lumsdaine, that Tavener felt he learned most, through being introduced to the music of Pierre Boulez, John Cage, György Ligeti and – perhaps more importantly – Olivier Messiaen.
Tavener's dramatic cantata Cain and Abel (1966) won him the Prince Rainier award while he was still a student. But the first work to bring him significant public attention was The Whale (1968), based on the biblical story of Jonah and premiered in the London Sinfonietta's inaugural concert.
By now the Tavener family firm was run by John's younger brother, Roger, who did some building work on Ringo Starr's house in Surrey. He and his fellow Beatles were open to outside ideas for their Apple record label, and The Whale was released in 1970.
The following year Apple released Celtic Requiem, the work in which Tavener's streams of metaphysical and musical thought coalesced, and for which he retained a lasting affection. Many of its themes became recurring motifs: a preoccupation with death, the fall from grace and loss of childhood innocence, and the transition from darkness to light.
Benjamin Britten heard Celtic Requiem, and his recommendation to the Royal Opera brought Tavener an opera commission. His first idea, of turning Jean Genet's novel Notre Dame des Fleurs into an electronic opera, would have been as innovative as it was controversial. But Peter Hall, then production director at Covent Garden, was not impressed.
Tavener's fascination with Roman Catholicism had resulted in several works from the late 1960s and early 70s, notably the 50-minute, large-scale choral meditation on texts by the 16th-century Spanish mystic St John of the Cross – Ultimos Ritos (Last Rites, 1974). St John's metaphysical concept of "dying to oneself" registered strongly with Tavener. When Tavener was introduced to the story of St Thérèse of Lisieux in 1971, he immediately empathised with her short life and physical suffering, and was convinced she would be the ideal subject for the Covent Garden commission.
Not everyone concurred. The playwright Gerard McLarnon spent the best part of three years working on the libretto for Thérèse; Tavener himself became musically "blocked" and felt himself drawing away from the Catholic ethos in which it was steeped. The critics were divided when it eventually appeared in 1979. In hindsight, it was something of a cul-de-sac. There was perhaps too much angst in the music, and it was too static in action for a two-hour opera.
Tavener's marriage to the Greek dancer Victoria Maragopoulou in 1974 lasted only a few months. Tavener's inability to sustain the relationship affected him deeply, and the chamber opera A Gentle Spirit (1977), another collaboration with McLarnon, based on a story by Dostoevsky, deals with a marriage that fails to the extent of a pawnbroker's wife taking her own life. In many ways it was far superior to Thérèse, with the internal drama more suited to the stage. Moreover, it touched upon Russian orthodoxy, to which McLarnon had been a convert for several years.
Tavener also converted to the Russian Orthodox church, which he said filled him with a sense of "homecoming". However, his works from this period – most notably Kyklike Kinesis, The Immurement of Antigone, and Palintropos – while still unmistakably his, sought a voice that could combine Orthodox beliefs with creativity. They culminated in the powerful Akhmatova Requiem (1981).
In 1980, Tavener suffered a stroke that left him partially paralysed for a time. He doubted he would ever write music again, and was never entirely well for the rest of his life. He believed that the stroke had shifted his creative outlook, and when he did resume composing he was more at ease in unifying his faith with his music. With the radiantly beautiful Ikon of Light (1984), for chorus and string trio, he can be said to have truly found his voice.
In the same period he produced a rare secular work, To a Child Dancing in the Wind (1983), a setting of the poem by Yeats, one of the few western poets he admired. It also showed him returning to the theme of the loss of childhood innocence.
The death of his mother in 1985 was another devastating blow. The healing effect of his beloved Greece, however, and the shrine of St Nektarios on the island of Aegina, south of Athens, gave him hope. He immediately began work on the moving Eis Thanaton, a setting of the Greek poet Andreas Kalvos's Ode to Death.
It was at this time that Mother Thekla, the extraordinary abbess of an Orthodox monastery on the Yorkshire moors near Whitby, became an increasingly important part of Tavener's life. She assumed the role of spiritual mentor, collaborator and adviser until, in 2003, Tavener's increasing interest in a more universalist philosophy led to a breakdown in their friendship.
The considerable forces required for The Akathist of Thanksgiving (1988) were deployed spatially, and Tavener's preoccupation with man's exclusion from the state of paradise inform the colossal, two-and-a-half-hour work Resurrection and its pendant work, the string quartet The Hidden Treasure (both 1989).
In 1990 Tavener was diagnosed with Marfan syndrome, a hereditary condition affecting the connective tissue, and he remained in a critical condition for some time after an operation. Nonetheless, he continued work on The Apocalypse, a massive work for soloists, chorus and orchestra, which at one time he thought might be his last.
The following year he married Maryanna Schaefer, and they moved to Sussex. This was the first time Tavener had moved in his life, having previously remained in the house where he was born. Greece, too, became an increasingly important refuge and a haven for composing. He returned to opera again with Mary of Egypt (1992), which met with some success at its Aldeburgh premiere.
In later years, once he had acquired a broadly based audience, his universalist focus continued to result in wonderful works, such as the mass Sollemnitas in Conceptione Immaculata Beatae Mariae Virginis (2006) and the Requiem (2008) for cello, soloists, chorus and orchestra, premiered in Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Drawing its texts from Sufi poetry, the Catholic Mass, the Koran and Hindu words from the Upanishad, Tavener explained that "the essence of the Requiem is contained in the words 'Our glory lies where we cease to exist'". Like practically all of Tavener's music, it is a story about a "journey" and becoming "one with God".
Days before the premiere of Sollemnitas, he suffered a heart attack while attending rehearsals in Zurich. He spent months in intensive care in a London hospital, during which time his brother died of a heart attack, and it took till 2011 for larger works to begin to flow again, among them the monodrama The Death of Ivan Ilyich (2012). He said he felt particularly proud of this piece, based on Tolstoy's novel, which featured in an evening of his new and rarely performed work at the Manchester international festival earlier this year.
Tavener was renowned for his passion for cars: a newspaper once described him as "the mystic who drives a Rolls-Royce". When he climbed into the passenger seat of my Citroën diesel on the way to give a lecture in Cornwall, he pronounced, typically teasingly: "It's a very sensible car, isn't it?" Not everything had to be on a grand scale: thoroughly representative of the man I got to know when studying with him is the tiny choral work The Lamb (1984).
He is survived by Maryanna and their three children, Theodora, Sofia and Orlando.
• John Kenneth Tavener, composer, born 28 January 1944; died 12 November 2013
• John Tavener official website
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/12/john-tavenerIt took until halfway through Tavener's career for him to receive substantial recognition. This came with The Protecting Veil (1989), the "icon in sound" for cello and strings inspired by the Mother of God and premiered at the BBC Proms by Steven Isserlis. The soloist found it to be "a gorgeous, romantic piece of music; the first performance was one of the highlights of my concert life", and his 1992 recording was a bestseller. Five years later, Tavener achieved global celebrity when his Song for Athene (1993) closed the funeral service for Diana, Princess of Wales, televised from Westminster Abbey.
In the closing minutes of the old millennium, the impact of the choral work A New Beginning was somewhat lost in the festivities that took place in the dome now known as the O2, on the Thames at Greenwich. Nonetheless, the year 2000 brought Tavener a knighthood, a festival of his music at the Southbank Centre, London, and the first performance of Fall and Resurrection, exploring the characteristic themes of the end of the world and paradise. Tavener's use of instruments such as the ram's horns, nay flute and kaval (both forms of folk flute) saw him pushing the boundaries of his vision ever closer to the east and to eastern religions, another characteristic impulse.
The work was dedicated to the Prince of Wales, with whom Tavener formed a lasting friendship. Prince Charles became a generous supporter of his music, especially his explorations of the universalist approach to religion that the two men shared.
Despite ongoing health problems, Tavener was in demand, and responded prolifically. The events of 9/11 made him more acutely aware of the dangers of religious dogmatism. In a letter to the Times after the atrocity, Tavener urged world leaders to read the 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi, whose saying "sell cleverness, buy wonder" reflected what he was trying to achieve with his music.
He took a huge risk with the seven-hour vigil The Veil of the Temple (2003) at the Temple church in London, but this listening marathon was received with great enthusiasm by critics and public alike. It was the first large-scale expression of his universalism; the work that truly embraced this outlook was his hour-long song cycle Schuon Lieder (2004) for soprano, string quartet, piano and four Tibetan temple bowls. Despite its overall length, this is a masterpiece of miniature writing, setting 19 texts. Tavener told me that he felt particularly proud of it, not only because of the direction in which it was taking him, but also because of the beauty of the verse by the metaphysical poet and philosopher Frithjof Schuon.
Never afraid of controversy, Tavener found it head-on with The Beautiful Names (2007), a meditation on the 99 names of Allah which was given its premiere in Westminster Cathedral, much to the consternation of many Catholics, who staged an open-air demonstration before the performance. Nonetheless, the work was warmly received, and the critic Robert Maycock observed that "if Tavener were to write nothing else, this would surely stand as a summation of what he has tried to achieve".
Tavener was born in Wembley Park, north-west London, the elder of two sons. His Presbyterian parents, Kenneth and Muriel, who ran a family building firm, gave him a religious upbringing and nurtured his musical talents. He began composing and studying the piano at an early age, and gained a music scholarship to Highgate school, north London.
Two early encounters had a profound effect: a performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute – for Tavener the only opera that transcended western tradition – at Glyndebourne, and Stravinsky's Canticum Sacrum. He studied for a time with the pianist Solomon, and entered the Royal Academy of Music. Stage nerves deterred him from performance, and he was encouraged as a composer by Lennox Berkeley. However, it was from a fellow student, David Lumsdaine, that Tavener felt he learned most, through being introduced to the music of Pierre Boulez, John Cage, György Ligeti and – perhaps more importantly – Olivier Messiaen.
Tavener's dramatic cantata Cain and Abel (1966) won him the Prince Rainier award while he was still a student. But the first work to bring him significant public attention was The Whale (1968), based on the biblical story of Jonah and premiered in the London Sinfonietta's inaugural concert.
By now the Tavener family firm was run by John's younger brother, Roger, who did some building work on Ringo Starr's house in Surrey. He and his fellow Beatles were open to outside ideas for their Apple record label, and The Whale was released in 1970.
The following year Apple released Celtic Requiem, the work in which Tavener's streams of metaphysical and musical thought coalesced, and for which he retained a lasting affection. Many of its themes became recurring motifs: a preoccupation with death, the fall from grace and loss of childhood innocence, and the transition from darkness to light.
Benjamin Britten heard Celtic Requiem, and his recommendation to the Royal Opera brought Tavener an opera commission. His first idea, of turning Jean Genet's novel Notre Dame des Fleurs into an electronic opera, would have been as innovative as it was controversial. But Peter Hall, then production director at Covent Garden, was not impressed.
Tavener's fascination with Roman Catholicism had resulted in several works from the late 1960s and early 70s, notably the 50-minute, large-scale choral meditation on texts by the 16th-century Spanish mystic St John of the Cross – Ultimos Ritos (Last Rites, 1974). St John's metaphysical concept of "dying to oneself" registered strongly with Tavener. When Tavener was introduced to the story of St Thérèse of Lisieux in 1971, he immediately empathised with her short life and physical suffering, and was convinced she would be the ideal subject for the Covent Garden commission.
Not everyone concurred. The playwright Gerard McLarnon spent the best part of three years working on the libretto for Thérèse; Tavener himself became musically "blocked" and felt himself drawing away from the Catholic ethos in which it was steeped. The critics were divided when it eventually appeared in 1979. In hindsight, it was something of a cul-de-sac. There was perhaps too much angst in the music, and it was too static in action for a two-hour opera.
Tavener's marriage to the Greek dancer Victoria Maragopoulou in 1974 lasted only a few months. Tavener's inability to sustain the relationship affected him deeply, and the chamber opera A Gentle Spirit (1977), another collaboration with McLarnon, based on a story by Dostoevsky, deals with a marriage that fails to the extent of a pawnbroker's wife taking her own life. In many ways it was far superior to Thérèse, with the internal drama more suited to the stage. Moreover, it touched upon Russian orthodoxy, to which McLarnon had been a convert for several years.
Tavener also converted to the Russian Orthodox church, which he said filled him with a sense of "homecoming". However, his works from this period – most notably Kyklike Kinesis, The Immurement of Antigone, and Palintropos – while still unmistakably his, sought a voice that could combine Orthodox beliefs with creativity. They culminated in the powerful Akhmatova Requiem (1981).
In 1980, Tavener suffered a stroke that left him partially paralysed for a time. He doubted he would ever write music again, and was never entirely well for the rest of his life. He believed that the stroke had shifted his creative outlook, and when he did resume composing he was more at ease in unifying his faith with his music. With the radiantly beautiful Ikon of Light (1984), for chorus and string trio, he can be said to have truly found his voice.
In the same period he produced a rare secular work, To a Child Dancing in the Wind (1983), a setting of the poem by Yeats, one of the few western poets he admired. It also showed him returning to the theme of the loss of childhood innocence.
The death of his mother in 1985 was another devastating blow. The healing effect of his beloved Greece, however, and the shrine of St Nektarios on the island of Aegina, south of Athens, gave him hope. He immediately began work on the moving Eis Thanaton, a setting of the Greek poet Andreas Kalvos's Ode to Death.
It was at this time that Mother Thekla, the extraordinary abbess of an Orthodox monastery on the Yorkshire moors near Whitby, became an increasingly important part of Tavener's life. She assumed the role of spiritual mentor, collaborator and adviser until, in 2003, Tavener's increasing interest in a more universalist philosophy led to a breakdown in their friendship.
The considerable forces required for The Akathist of Thanksgiving (1988) were deployed spatially, and Tavener's preoccupation with man's exclusion from the state of paradise inform the colossal, two-and-a-half-hour work Resurrection and its pendant work, the string quartet The Hidden Treasure (both 1989).
In 1990 Tavener was diagnosed with Marfan syndrome, a hereditary condition affecting the connective tissue, and he remained in a critical condition for some time after an operation. Nonetheless, he continued work on The Apocalypse, a massive work for soloists, chorus and orchestra, which at one time he thought might be his last.
The following year he married Maryanna Schaefer, and they moved to Sussex. This was the first time Tavener had moved in his life, having previously remained in the house where he was born. Greece, too, became an increasingly important refuge and a haven for composing. He returned to opera again with Mary of Egypt (1992), which met with some success at its Aldeburgh premiere.
In later years, once he had acquired a broadly based audience, his universalist focus continued to result in wonderful works, such as the mass Sollemnitas in Conceptione Immaculata Beatae Mariae Virginis (2006) and the Requiem (2008) for cello, soloists, chorus and orchestra, premiered in Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Drawing its texts from Sufi poetry, the Catholic Mass, the Koran and Hindu words from the Upanishad, Tavener explained that "the essence of the Requiem is contained in the words 'Our glory lies where we cease to exist'". Like practically all of Tavener's music, it is a story about a "journey" and becoming "one with God".
Days before the premiere of Sollemnitas, he suffered a heart attack while attending rehearsals in Zurich. He spent months in intensive care in a London hospital, during which time his brother died of a heart attack, and it took till 2011 for larger works to begin to flow again, among them the monodrama The Death of Ivan Ilyich (2012). He said he felt particularly proud of this piece, based on Tolstoy's novel, which featured in an evening of his new and rarely performed work at the Manchester international festival earlier this year.
Tavener was renowned for his passion for cars: a newspaper once described him as "the mystic who drives a Rolls-Royce". When he climbed into the passenger seat of my Citroën diesel on the way to give a lecture in Cornwall, he pronounced, typically teasingly: "It's a very sensible car, isn't it?" Not everything had to be on a grand scale: thoroughly representative of the man I got to know when studying with him is the tiny choral work The Lamb (1984).
He is survived by Maryanna and their three children, Theodora, Sofia and Orlando.
• John Kenneth Tavener, composer, born 28 January 1944; died 12 November 2013
• John Tavener official website
No comments:
Post a Comment