ICON IN SOUND AN INTERVIEW WITH SIR JOHN TAVENER GREGORY M. PYSH Gregory M. Pysh Minister of Music First Presbyterian Church Midland, TX
[email protected] Author’s Note: With the passing of Sir John Tavener in November 2013, there has been a renewed interest in his music written for chorus.The previously unpublished interview below, although conducted in 1998, gives pertinent insight into the composer’s thoughts about composition and choral music. Edits have been made for grammatical consistency and, where necessary for clarity, text additions appear in brackets. John Tavener was born in London in 1944. Distantly related to the Tudor composer with a similar surname (Taverner), he displayed a musical talent at an early age. At twelve years old, he heard a performance of Igor Stravinsky’s Canticum Sacrum in France and speaks of it as a “piece that woke me up, and made me want to be a composer.”1 His secondary education was at Highgate School, where his classmates included British composer, editor, and arranger John Rutter. At age seventeen, Tavener was appointed organist-choirmaster for St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Kensington, a post he held for the next fourteen years. In 1962, he matriculated to the Royal Academy of Music, where Photo by Simone Canetty-Clarke his composition teachers were Sir Lennox Berkeley and David Lumsdaine. In 1968, Tavener’s dramatic cantata The Whale was premiered by the London Sinfonietta and took its audience by storm. Called modern music without tears, its success led to conversations with Ringo Starr and subsequent release on the Beatles Apple label.