John Tavener

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John Tavener (2005)

Sir John Kenneth Tavener (born January 28, 1944 in London , † November 12, 2013 in Child Okeford , Dorset ) was a British composer who was best known for his sacred vocal music .

Life

As the son of Presbyterian parents, Tavener came into contact with sacred music at an early age. After listening to Igor Stravinsky's Canticum Sacrum , he decided to turn to music. He studied at the Highgate School, was organist and choirmaster at St. John's Presbyterian Church and studied at the Royal Academy of Music (1961-1965). Tavener had planned to become a concert pianist and had already taken lessons from Solomon . However, his weak constitution (he suffered from Marfan's syndrome ) made playing the piano very difficult and he switched to composition, which he studied with Lennox Berkeley . In 1964 Tavener met his role model Stravinsky, who only wrote “I know” on the score of Three Holy Sonnets .

While still a student, he won the Prince Rainier von Monaco Prize in 1965 with his cantata Cain and Abel, premiered by the London Bach Society . This was followed by other compositions, predominantly religious themes, which established Tavener as one of the most gifted and charismatic composers in England. His breakthrough came in 1968 with the lavishly composed cantata The Whale , based on Olivier Messiaen , which was premiered at the founding concert of the London Sinfonietta.

Tavener got a record deal with the Beatles' label , Apple Records . In 1969 Tavener became professor of composition at Trinity College . In the same year Benjamin Britten invited him to write an opera for the Royal Opera House . For Tavener, for whom everything was easy until now, a crisis began: Writer's block delayed the completion of the opera and other works. His opera Thérèse only premiered in 1979 and failed the critics.

Encounters with the Carmelite P. Malachy Lynch and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in England, Metropolitan Anthony von Sourozh (1914-2003), who became an important mentor for Tavener, were of decisive importance for solving Tavener's creative crisis. Another important person for the composer from 1991 was Mother Thekla , the abbess of the Orthodox monastery of Normanby in Yorkshire , who translated, compiled or wrote texts for many of Tavener's choral works. In 1977 Tavener converted to the Russian Orthodox Church. His music now assumed a much stricter, transcendent character, while his compositional technique remained unchanged.

But he still drank too much and suffered from depression from the failure of his first marriage. In 1980 Tavener suffered a stroke and in 1991 he had a major operation during which his heart stopped and he had to be resuscitated. This experience made him on the one hand more serious and introverted, on the other hand it took away his fear of death. His writer's block subsided, he married a second time in 1991, had two daughters and had a worldwide success with The Protecting Veil .

Tavener became known to the general public through the performance of his work Song for Athene at the funeral of Princess Diana . In 2000 Tavener was knighted for his services to music.

In 2003 he published the seven-hour work The Veil of the Temple , which is based on texts from various religions. However, Tavener himself described the positioning of his faith in a BBC broadcast on April 2, 2010 as "essentially Orthodox". In 1999 he composed the piece “Prayer of the Heart” for Björk . The piece was first performed in 2001 at the “heartbeat” exhibition by Nan Goldin . For the film Children of Men , Tavener composed the piece Fragments of a Prayer in 2006 .

2013 he received as part of the festival European Church Music in Schwabisch Gmund the price of European church music . Tavener also worked on a new opera, The Toll Houses . He died on November 12, 2013 at the age of 69.

Work and criticism

The starting point for Tavener's compositional work was the Christian religion even before his conversion, since his conversion the theology and spirituality of the Orthodox Church and its music have been the basis of his works. However, Tavener did not simply take over the tradition, but converted it into its own tonal language. His works, conceived eclectically from the beginning , are deeply rooted in the past and at the same time modern. His music is not intended primarily for the concert hall, but rather for the liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church. Even Tavener's instrumental music (such as The Protecting Veil for cello and strings) is based on the liturgy. He is often compared to Arvo Pärt , whose music also tends towards diatonic tonality and homophony .

According to Tavener, the Orthodox denomination transformed his works “into icons made of notes instead of color”. He saw his way of composing as a departure from the artist cult since Ludwig van Beethoven and used the “intellectual organ [s] of the heart” in order to avoid both the academic aloofness of New Music and the romanticism of the 19th century: “The religious tradition says that only the spontaneous is true - if I try to compose and it is not spontaneous, nothing can come of it. As soon as I start thinking or encounter difficulties, I discard everything. That is exactly the opposite of the Western compositional idea: that someone struggles to achieve something. "

Tavener tried to cast off everything that was inessential in his tonal language. Very experimental at the beginning, he now depersonalized his works by simplifying and reducing them to consonance and stability, easily comprehensible, clear structure and forms. Dissonances , chromatics , overly complex counterpoint and rhythm stand in the way of the main function of the compositions, the conveyance of the religious message, and are therefore avoided. Nonetheless, Tavener's works made use of a rich spectrum of transitions and opposites , especially in the fields of pitch range, dynamics and timbre .

Works (selection)

  • 1965: Cain and Abel
  • 1966: The Whale
  • 1968: In Alium
  • 1969: Celtic Requiem
  • 1973: Thérèse (first performance 1979)
  • 1976: A Gentle Spirit (first performance 1977)
  • 1982: The Lamb
  • 1984: Ikon of Light
  • 1984: Orthodox Vigil Service
  • 1985: Two Hymns to the Mother of God
  • 1987: Akathist of Thanksgiving
  • 1988: The Protecting Veil
  • 1989: Resurrection
  • 1991: Mary of Egypt
  • 1992: Annunciation
  • 1993: The Apocalypse
  • 1993: Song for Athene
  • 1995: Svyati
  • 1996: The Hidden Face
  • 1997: Eternity's Sunrise
  • 1997: Fall and Resurrection
  • 1997: The Last Discourse
  • 1999: A New Beginning
  • 1999: Total Eclipse
  • 2000: Ikon of Eros
  • 2000: Lamentations and Praises
  • 2002: Elizabeth Full of Grace
  • 2002: Hymn of Dawn
  • 2002: Lament for Jerusalem
  • 2002: The Veil of the Temple (All Night Vigil)
  • 2005: Pratirùpa
  • 2005: Ex Maria Virgine (A Christmas Sequence)

Web links

Commons : John Tavener  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sir John Tavener has died, aged 69 , Guardian Article, Nov. 12, 2013
  2. ↑ http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/acc/tavener.html
  3. ↑ To the price of European church music on remszeitung.de
  4. ↑ a b c Archive link ( Memento from February 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Tavener, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tavener, John Kenneth (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British composer
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 2013
Place of death Child Okeford , Dorset