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Icon in Sound an Interview with Sir John Tavener Gregory M 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of Sir John Tavener in November 2013, there has been a renewed interest in his music written for chorus.The previously unpublished interview below, although conducted in 1998, gives pertinent insight into the composer’s thoughts about composition and choral music.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. Tavener continued to show an originality of concept and an intensely personal idiom, making his a voice quite separate from those of his contemporaries. Much of this individuality can be said to “hinge on…his rejection of modernist techniques in favor of a return to tonality, which is the historic musical language of the Church.”2 His works have also connected him with Henryk Górecki and Arvo Pärt, the trio given the title “holy minimalists” for their writing exclusively sacred works, many of these for chorus. CHORAL JOURNAL Volume 54 Number 10 19 ICON IN SOUND In 1977, after a long period of con- BBC documentaries; one, “Glimpses of What did the conversion to Eastern templation, Tavener joined the Russian Paradise,” evolving into a book of the Orthodoxy mean to you and to your Orthodox Church, a spiritual decision same name by Geoffrey Haydon and music? that shaped his compositions, both spiri- published in 1992. His many and varied tually and technically. Although he was works have been recorded by Sony, EMI, The Eastern Church has preserved the commissioned to write works outside of Hyperion, Virgin Classics, Chandos, and esoteric dimension of Christianity, that the Orthodox liturgical rubric (e.g., “The several others. The composer married which cannot be understood. I think I Lamb” and “Love Bade Me Welcome”), Maryanna Schaefer in 1991, and the confronted Tradition with a capital T. the preponderance of his compositions couple had three children. The Russian archbishop who asked me have texts or sources within the Ortho- This interview was conducted by to write a setting of the liturgy told me, dox faith. These include The Protecting phone on September 17, 1998. “I don’t want you to know anything Veil for solo cello and strings (winner about the tone system of the Orthodox of a Gramophone Award in 1992); the church; I just want you to react to it as Akathist of Thanksgiving for choir, soloists, What was the infl uence of Stravinsky’s words.” This was, in hindsight, a very wise strings, and percussion (which received Canticum Sacrum, and why is this piece thing to do, because I wrote it and they a standing ovation at its premiere in a so important to your development as sang it as a celebration of the liturgy. packed Westminster Abbey in 1988); a composer? Then I was confronted by a member of and an opera, Mary of Egypt, written for the congregation, saying, “Well, that’s just the 1992 Aldeburgh Festival. I heard in it, albeit at a subliminal level, your own fabricated music. It has noth- Of signifi cance in his prolifi c output when I was twelve, Tradition with a capi- ing to do with tradition. We don’t hear of choral music are “The Lamb and The tal T. I also heard echoes of Byzantine the tone system, etc.” It was about that Tyger,” both on a text of William Blake; music, particularly in one section (the time also that I met Sufi s, a musician, and and “Today the Virgin,” with text by tenor solo “Surge, aquilo,” where the realized that unless music had tradition Mother Thekla, abbess of an Orthodox bass plays a drone under the solo). The connected to it, it was just domestic, had monastery in North Yorkshire, who whole piece has an air of traditional no function, and was a meaningless sort was a mentor for Tavener’s spiritual and antiquity about it. of intellectual, or just emotional, exercise. musical life, having compiled, translated, and written a good many of his texts; IInn aadditionddition ttoo CCanticumanticum, wwhathat wwereere What was the signifi cance of Mother and “Song for Athene,” or “Alleluia, May ootherther iinnfl uuencesences oonn yyourour ddevelopmentevelopment Thekla in your spiritual and composi- Flights of Angels Sing Thee to Thy Rest,” aass a ccomposer?omposer? tional life? sung for the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, which brought his music to the I heard the Magic Flute when I was She drew me out at a period in my life attention of many American ears for twelve also. I can’t say that Mozart when I wanted to write only liturgical the fi rst time. was an interest exactly, but [I liked] the music. She said that there was no point His working method was to reduce fact that in that piece, particularly, he in doing this, because the liturgical music ideas, both musical and textual, to their deals with archetypes rather than real of the Orthodox church already existed, absolute essence, an ideal shared by people. I think the archetypes are the unless, she said, England became truly an Stravinsky in his later music. To aspire to real people. We’ve lost that. Ever since autocephalous Orthodox church. what is transcendent, Tavener believed the advent of the model, we’ve lost it was essential to return to primordial dimension and tradition. People are our Byzantine chant has a prominent place values, to mankind’s deepest roots, to a archetypes, and even though Mozart in your music. Do you use one set holy tradition of working in an age that came at it through a Masonic path, he exclusively? was fundamentally unsympathetic to it. transcended that completely. I think it’s It was a bold aspiration, pursued not the whole idea of transcendence in the I wouldn’t say that I am a hard-line with arrogance but with humility. The Magic Flute; not only that, but it could traditionalist, but Greek chant is in the passionate conviction that lent urgency be listened to by a three-year-old and apostolic tradition. It is eschatological to this momentous task illumines every a ninety-three-year-old but on different Christian chant; it comes from ancient page of his music. levels. Greece and has the Jewish music that Tavener was the subject of several was being sung in the synagogue at the 20 CHORAL JOURNAL Volume 54 Number 10 AN INTERVIEW WITH SIR JOHN TAVENER time of Christ, and I would say a Greek tone, as you imply, doesn’t bother me, ecstasy. I remember one instance in monk would certainly say it was in a because in the West we don’t have that particular when I was writing a piece I holy tradition, where others might say rich tradition. call “Mr. Gorgiere” just for instruments. that Russian and other national chants The music seemed to come from no- destroyed that tradition. I can’t feel that, How important are icons to your where. It is very long, and I was writing because I think also of the words of music? it in Greece at the beginning of the year Christ, “Behold, I make all things new.” [1998]. Often in the evenings I went for And novelty in the sense of Elliot Carter Well, I think, again, tradition, symbol. If a walk. I was watching the wonderful or (Pierre) Boulez or any modernist. The you look at a Byzantine icon with an- winter sunset, and I remember having composer means nothing whatsoever gels gazing on the face of the Divine, this curious thought: I am just a piece of to me. It seems to be kind of like an you see faces that are almost frozen music, I’m not a person. It was a strange, intellectual game. So, there is a kind of with ecstasy—a kind of frozen ecstasy. out-of-body experience. You have stated that “sacred art has gone downhill since the Middle Ages.” Sir John Tavener's working method was to reduce ideas, Can you please elaborate? both musical and textual, to their absolute essence. I will go even further. I think it has gone downhill after Gregorian chant. Once the ego started to do clever things with music, [music is] already going downhill. It’s going in a humanist direction. Maybe fascination in it, but for me as the listener, If anybody, or I, was able to write music it’s very unkind of me to say downhill.
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