JOHN TAVENER YPAKOË

SCOTTISH ENSEMBLE THE WALLACE COLLECTION CANTY ELENA RIU JOHN TAVENER (1944–2013)

1. …Depart In Peace… ...... 25:11 3. Two Hadiths ...... 9:12 performed by Scottish Ensemble performed by Canty −− −− Clio Gould violin Rebecca Tavener director Patricia Rozario soprano Micaela Haslam, Anne Lewis, Matthew Rooke tempura Joanne Wicks, William Taylor harp Recorded at Glasgow Concert Halls, Recorded at Greyfriar’s Church, Edinburgh, Glasgow, UK, 4–6 March 1998 UK, 24–26 February and 9 November 2009

2. Trisagion ...... 12:29 YPAKOË performed by The Wallace Collection performed by Elena Riu −− 4. Arise, O God ...... 2:04 John Wallace trumpet 5. Let all mortal flesh keep silent ...... 4:00 John Miller trumpet 6. Weep not for me, O mother ...... 4:15 Paul Gardham horn 7. The Lord awoke as one that sleepeth ... 5:39 Simon Gunton trombone 8. Remember us also, O Lord ...... 5:35 Robin Haggart tuba −− Recorded at St James’ Church, Rushton, Elena Riu piano Turnbridge Wells, 26–27 November 1997 Recorded at St George’s, Bristol, UK, and 16 February 1998 6–7 April 1999

Total Running Time: 69 minutes

Recorded by Philip Hobbs Cover image by John McBride Post-production by Julia Thomas Design by gmtoucari.com

2 JOHN TAVENER

John Tavener was born in January 1944 in clients who was to have the more lasting the Northern London suburb of Wembley effect. She was Rhonda, Lady Birley, and it Park. His grandfather, a keen amateur was at her home, Charleston Manor, that musician, ran a highly successful building John was encouraged to flex his musical and decorating business, whose clients were muscles and put on performances of his latest later to play important roles in Tavener’s works. By the late 1960s the family firm had musical career. His father played the organ at added to its list of clients and was the Presbyterian Church in and engaged in refurbishing their various houses it was the minister there who was the first to and the offices of their Apple Corporation. commission a work from the budding young The two Johns – Tavener and Lennon – met composer, a ‘Credo’ which was performed at one evening in Kensington and, over dinner, the church on 12 November 1961. Although played tapes of each other’s most recent still a pupil at Highgate School, John was music. So impressed was Lennon by what he soon appointed organist at the Presbyterian heard that it was soon decided to record, on Church of his own, St John’s in Kensington, Apple Records, Tavener’s latest composition, a post he was to hold for the next fourteen , a work dedicated to Lady Birley but years. In January 1962 he enrolled at the written for the ’s inaugural and began to study concert. composition with . The Whale certainly put Tavener and Although composing had already his music on the map and commissions become his overriding passion, Tavener’s started to come in from all sides. Most of family was still expecting him to embark on a these new works grew out of Tavener’s strong career as a concert pianist and to this end he religious convictions which, at that time, were was sent to play to Solomon, the legendary, gradually, but inexorably, moving away from but by then, paralysed pianist whose house the teachings of the Western Church toward had just been renovated by C. Tavener & Son. those of the East; he was finally received into It was however, another of his grandfather’s the Orthodox Church in September 1977.

3 …DEPART IN PEACE…

As time went on, Tavener began more and After many years of visiting Greece, a country more to incorporate into his own music the with which he had fallen profoundly in love, sacred tone systems used for the orthodox Tavener eventually bought himself a house on liturgy. The pieces he was then writing were the island of Evia and it was there, at Pigadaki predominantly vocal, but, in 1987, came The on 5 June 1997, that he completed the work Protecting Veil for cello and string orchestra. he was to call…Depart in Peace… . Inspired by the Feast of of This is a setting in Greek of the Song of the Mother of God, the popularity this piece Simeon, otherwise known as the Nunc Dimittis, enjoyed did again for Tavener what The Whale interspersed with Alliuatic antiphons. The word had done for him some twenty years before; Alleluia is treated in three different ways. Firstly put him firmly in the public eye and made his it emerges, syllable by syllable, from the string music immensely popular. texture, then it is sung with tender longing He had been encouraged to write music almost as a hymn and finally ecstatically for ‘the market place’, not just for the church, ‘like Middle-Eastern chanting’. As the piece by Mother Thekla, Abbess of the Orthodox progresses these antiphons lengthen and the Monastery at Normanby in Yorkshire, who by Middle-Eastern one gets faster and faster. In then had become his spiritual adviser, friend between the Alleluias, the singer, with great and librettist. One of the many rich fruits of humility and accompanied only by solo violin, the collaboration between Mother Thekla and tempura and cellos, gradually builds up the Tavener has been the opera Mary of Egypt Song of Simeon – ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy which, after a very long gestation period, was servant depart in peace’. Tavener wrote this first performed in June 1992. The part of Mary work to the ‘eternal memory’ of his father who on that occasion was taken by Patricia Rozario had recently died and it was first performed at and it has been with this splendid singer in the Hellenic Centre in London by the Scottish mind that Tavener wrote several more of Ensemble with Patricia Rozario and Clio Gould his works. on 25 June 1998. © Peter Avis, 1998

4 TRISAGION

A purely instrumental composition by He continues: ‘My short piece bearing this Tavener is quite an unusual thing, for most title falls into three main sections, the style of his works involve the voice in one way of which is both solemn and festive. There or another. There are even some pieces in are two brass groups which answer each which instrumentalists are called upon to other antiphonally. The material is rooted in sing as well as play their instruments. Works Znamenny chant and Byzantine palindromes, do exist for solo piano, organ, cello viola, both essential ingredients for any kind of guitar and flute and there are one or two for radical rediscovery of the sacred or theophanic standard chamber ensembles – flute and tradition in music.’ piano, string quartet, wind ensemble – not to © Peter Avis, 1999 mention a short one in memory of Stravinsky for the fascinating combination of two alto flutes, organ and handbells. This is one of three pieces written for brass ensemble. Composed in 1981, Trisagion was originally intended for Philip Jones and his famous brass ensemble but, according to Tavener’s biographer Geoffrey Haydon, Jones declared it ‘unplayable by a quintet of mere mortals’. Its first performance, therefore, did not take place until November 1985, when it was played by Equale Brass, a group of ‘mere mortals’ led by John Wallace, at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. In his note on the piece, Tavener explains that Trisagion is Greek for ‘thrice-holy’ and is also an important hymn in the Byzantine Church.

5 TWO HADITHS YPAKOË

Two Hadiths was commissioned by Canty Until the twentieth century, the Christian to premiere in York Minster in 2008 for the world was united by potent religious symbols. launch of the ‘Minster Quarter’ initiative. Despite the sometimes fierce divisions in Hadiths are sayings by the Prophet doctrine and spirit between Catholic and Mohammed that are extra to the Koran, and Orthodox communities, and between them many of them are poetic, almost visionary and the legions of rival Protestant sects, observations about the nature of the there were important ideas in common: Almighty. When Canty first discussed the work the incarnation of Christ, his teachings, his and William Taylor’s collection of instruments, suffering and death on the cross, and his Tavener was immediately intrigued by resurrection from the dead. the idea of the bray harp with its special However, with the turn of the century this resonating qualities and potential to evoke began to change. Religious education became sitar-like sonorities. The result is a meditation less dogmatic, more liberal and in some that links the remote concept of the beauty of places faded out altogether. Generations holiness with the awesome power of the act could grow up with only the vaguest notions of creation. of what Christianity was about. While some © Rebecca Tavener, 2010 saw this as a tragedy, for others it was liberating. Anyone who felt the need for spirituality in their lives was free to seek it out in other religions or systems of belief; or ultimately if they chose Christianity, it was at least a genuine choice and not merely the result of social conditioning. Works by Arvo Pärt, Peter Sculthorpe, Leoŝ Janáĉek and Tavener are, in their very different ways, products of this new spiritual freedom. The artists who created them sought

6 their own truths, their own icons, finding with high trills, a sound suggesting the wings and expressing them in ways which often set of hovering angels, or the response of heaven them apart from the cultures in which they to earthly prayer. As serene as Ypakoë is, the lived and wrote. Tavener progressed from final section is open-ended; the music seems complex to a simpler style of to break off mid-phrase as though Tavener composition, whose power to move listeners were telling us that perfection is not to be is still surprising. Tavener found a deep well of sought in this world. inspiration in the music and teachings of the © Stephen Johnson Orthodox Church. He described some of his later works as ‘Ikons’, music composed to draw us to the contemplation of divine goodness, or to the central Christian teachings. Ypakoë, written for the pianist Elena Riu, refers to the words of the angels to the disciples who came to Christ’s tomb on the morning of the resurrection: ‘Why seek ye among the dead, as though He were a mortal man?’ The five movements approach the central theme of Christ’s death and resurrection from different devotional angles: grief and rejoicing, praise and penitence. Again, simple chant-like figures dominate the music, with the pianist’s two hands often singing out in counterpoint, and the occasional delicious dissonant ‘scrunch’ as the modes collide. In ‘The Lord awoke us as one that sleepeth’ the right hand decorates the left hand’s chanting

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