John Tavener- A Portrait of him(english versión)

Hello Friends

This is my first article in English, though I will write the same article in Spanish. This article I am going to write it about the English yet sort of Byzantine-universalist composer Sir John Tavener. He was born in 28 January 1944, and his first success was “The Whale” in 1968. That same year, later, he won a contest of BBC against two other major English composers. While others composed in a sort “grey” serialist way, he composed a work with lots of surrealism called “In Alium”. Other major works of the period are Celtic Requiem, Ultimos Ritos and Therese. In the middle of the 70’s, after one marriage with a Greek woman, he had a deep crises. Catholicism couldn’t fulfill him. He contacted with the Metropolitan in England and he entered in Russian Orthodox Church in England in 1977. He started to study the tones of Byzantine and Znammenniy Chant. Also he started to study them because the critics that English orthodox people told him about his work Liturgy of St John Chrysostom.



In this period Tavener starts to compose works with Greek or Russian themes: Six Russian Folk Songs, Kyklike Kinesis, A Greek Interlude, Akhmatova Requiem, Canticle of the Mother of God, Sappho….these works are still dissonant but he is more and more clear and it becomes clear that he is closer to the consonant world of his later language.

The early to mid 80’s was a period of transition. Dissonance and some serialism are mixed with tonality and with the studies of Byzantine and Znammeny Tones. He became prolific in choral works started with “Funeral Ikos”. Ikon of Light, To A Child Dancing in the Wind, Akathist of Thanksgiving, Eis Thanaton and The Protecting Veil are the key works of this period. In the 90’s huge works like Apocalypse and Mary Of Egypt mix with miniatures like Song For Athene, and some string quartets like Diodia, The Last Sleep of the Virgin and little voice works like Akhmatova Songs. In the late 90’s some Hinduism and Hindu music influences came also to the forefront, and a little bit of Sufism. Ragas were also part of his influences since 80’s but it became more prominent at the end of 90’s. From the beginning of millennium we have Fall and Resurrection, The Beautiful Names( a kind of Islamic tribute to the names of Allah), Solemnitas Conceptionae Virgin Mary (in which Catholic influences appeared again), Schuön Lieder, Requiem but the work that made him more open was “The Veil Of The Temple”.



So, he became profilic in these last years, even if his relation with Mother Tekla, her friend nun and muse became worse but before her death it improves. In fact Tekla continued collaborating with Tavener even in works like The Veil Of The Temple. This composer is often critized by the critics, specially after his conversion to the Orthodox church and also after his change of view with the inclusion of the spirituality of Frithjof Schuon. Sometimes he received critics like “his music is nothing”, or “it’s blatant”, or “it’s vacuum” or “it has no substance”, or if it’s too easy. He often needed to defend himself. Also he had a strange vision for the usual point of view of Western critics of music and his soul, his mind and his musical affinity went towards East.

All these things are crystal clear in Internet articles and in his web site. Yet I want to give my opinion, my feelings and my thoughts about this great composer. First of all, I made analysis of these works up until now: Cantus Mysticus, Prayer Of The Heart(with Björk), Thunder Entered Her, The Lament of the Mother Of God, Coplas and Nomine Jesu. I could say with these works and other ones I saw , I heard and I analyze a little bit I admit I have a strange fascination with this composer. First of all, musicologists and critics almost avoid him. I found only one thesis about him and it was one comparing him with his colleague and friend Arvo Pärt. It was about the work Ikon Of Light.

I can say my favourite composer is Olivier Messiaen. But there are lots of information about his music, that now I know most of his characteristics features. Anyway, he was a very very big musician and composer. Another composer who fascinated me last months is Claude Vivier and I found a lots of things about him, his relation with Stockhausen, his special way of “spectral” music. Even some works I like from Steve Reich…I found a lot of information, musical information about the work. But John Tavener…it’s like he is very successful with the public yet unsuccessful for the critics. Anyway, for me he is very very eclectic composer. He used many techniques and sources I know. Maybe except spectralism he used all the techniques from the “modernism” and “postmodernism” even if he said that he dislikes “modernism”. Paradoxically, despite I understand him, because his music is like no one else, not even Arvo Pärt does the same music. And he used many techniques from the 20th Century: some kind of minimalism and repetition, serialism, magic squares, retrograde and inversions, modal music, maqams, ragas and talas, byzantine and znammeniy tone, irregular time signatures, time fields, collage like textures, controlled improvisation, controlled aleatoricism…. I found all these techniques in the huge and vast works of Tavener.



For example, I LOVE literally, LOVE his work “Akhmatova Requiem”. Not only Russian culture made very good works of Art , specially in the music with people like Mussorgsky, Schnittke or Stravinsky. The text is dramatic, sad yet wonderful and he nailed the ambient and the atmosphere of the Russian text. He combined modality and serialism. For example the dedication a sort of G major/minor mode. Then it comes the first longest song of the work, with austere and ominous mood. Lovely way of using a 12 tone row, for me different than other composers. I love that he used it in the soprano part like a chant, like a real chant, in which the Soprano made ornaments of two notes. The row is: D down to B up to Bb down to A down to G up to G# down to E up to F up to F# down to D# down to C# down to C. So, we have movements of semitones and third minors. But those repetitions of notes in the Soprano part are fantastic. Also his imaginative way of using textures, the strings, the celesta… and also this row that appear in the Epilogue of the work. In the double bass for example appear the same row but different intervals, the soprano use an inversion of that row, with repetitions of G-A, and Bb-Db…until E and retrograde….the rhythms fluctuating between 3 and 4/4…But also here he uses modality and bitonality and a way of using chant in the soprano very lyrically and modally for me closer to his most famous period and closer to the Orthodox Chant.

Also appears canons in the strings in sixtuplets, which also appears later in Schuon Lieder, though I think there it appears quintuplets. Also there is one part where the notes are written to be played but with no rhythm notated, only with instructions like as fast as possible, or with seconds. That technique appears in recently works like Popule Meus, Kaleidoscopes, Lalishri…. In Ikon of Light appears the Magic Squares. In his case it’s a latin text that appears in some churches but also in a fountain of Istambul. He considers it “Byzantine” which maybe it was used in the byzantine times. There is the greek nipson anomimata…but he used SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS which is a palindrome. Palindrome like Stravinsky before and also Messiaen, and even people like Reich is integral in Tavener’s works. So, not only Messiaen is the most profilic “palindromic” composer. He used them a lot. In this case each letter could be part of a scale. For example you take C note, and also D, E, F, G, A, B. So S could be C, A could be A, etc…each letter of the palindrome is one note and repetitions of the letter are repetitions of notes. It means also that it reads the same forwards and backwards. So he uses very little notes for the word “Fos” which means light in Greek. Also few notes, I think Ab, Eb, F and G, while the string trio in each entry before the “Fos” used pairs of notes(dyads) until he fills the 12 tone: G-Eb, Ab-F, D-Bb, C-F#, B-E, C#-A.



Rhythmically the time is suspended and it’s here and not in the harmonically sense when I can say Messiaen’s influence is in Tavener. Palindromes, Slow tempi, and some sort of ritual repetition and influence of plainchant though in Tavener is Byzantine and Orthodox more than Gregorian Chant than is Messiaen. Anyway, there are some theories about talking Gregorian or Ambrosian chant is closer to the first Christians and first centuries practice of plainchant and what we have from Byzantine is more influenced of Turkish and Ottoman chant…anyway in Tavener we see lots of microtones, yet he very rarely notated a precise quarter tone note….he leaves many times “freedom” in how much the flat or sharp it is….As he said about “Lamentations and Praises” from 2002 that it’s his most byzantine work, We found in this work some quarter tones notated very precisely in the chant. Microtones in a “serial” context we find in “Canticle of the mother of God”. “Lamentations and Praises” is one of my favourite recent works of him, and I found it very attractive and also very Byzantine. Also some triad chords combinations are curious D major and F# major for example. This kind of combinations are found it in works like Solemnitas Conceptionae and Schuön Lieder, D major-B major and G major, thought they are “logic” relations, after all D and B major share F# and B and G major share B…



Odd time signatures appears in places like “The Veil Of The Temple” though most of them are just the “We need to write a time signature for making it easy to people” yet it’s conceived maybe without time signature. I mean 26, 20, 17 and other 20/4 like that. No time signatures or no bar lines appear in works like “The Lament of the Mother Of God” and “A Mini Song Cycle for Gina”.

He seems conservative, and maybe some music of him it is. Even he admitted that he felt his works the same after some years of Orthodoxy and he needed to open himself musically at least. And he did. Yet there are aspects that he retains in any stage of his musical evolution, palindromes from The Whale, sort of diatonicism, because even Celtic Requiem has lots of dissonance, it seems a little bit of serialism, the Eb major chord is totally dominant in the work, and the children songs are clearly established in that tonality, ritual, from The Whale to Requiem to Akathist to…etc. He uses also the “ascension” metaphysically and musically, “The Veil Of Temple” starts in C major, and ascends: Cycle II is in D, Cycle III in E, IV in F…until VIII again in C one octave higher. The music becomes richer, more dense, a little more complicated….repetitions of sections but “his kind of minimalism” if we can call it that way is closer to the repetition people like Igor Stravinsky or even Olivier Messiaen employed in their works. The Lament of Mother of God also ascends from A minor to A major, through any white note in modal scales.

In the cello part of the requiem we feel also the Messiaen influence with some tritones and some intervals more characteristically of him. Also in “Requiem For the Father Malachy” in the “Offertorium” or even in the vocal part of “In alium” in the opening.



His diatonicism was clear almost from the start even in his modernistic works. Somehow using Eb major in Celtic Requiem as a basis, some musical notes of the Crucifixus of Mass in B minor from J.S.Bach as a ostinato in Nomine Jesu… the medieval like chant in “Canciones Españolas”, the ostinato of “Annon Annon Lee” in her Responsorium in 7/4…all these moments are clearly felt as a feeling and missing the tonality or the modality or both. In fact, as many composers I really love and enjoy John Tavener for me is basically a modal composer.





He could use a serial like modal music in Akhmatova Requiem, in To A Child Dancing In The Wind, his use of the 25 note magic square palindrome also generates modal like music. His use of microtones reminds me of the music and long phrases that I read about Iraq Maqams and music. His use of weird and exotic instruments such as duduk, Tibetan horn, pow wow drums… makes me see an influence from Eastern Europe music, Greek music, Middle Eastern, American and Asian traditional music. Maybe I miss sometimes in his music another choice of instruments, maybe vibraphone or marimba which I think he never used them though maybe I am wrong, more guitar(he used it in Sappho and also in Chant), maybe an oud or even a Greek Bouzouki….His use of Organ was since 80’s limited, he used them in many pieces but mostly to accompaniment mostly because in Orthodox Church banned the use of musical instruments and the only musical instrument that can appear in the liturgy is the human voice. Anyway he used it even for Orthodox themes. And he used even a 12 tone row in Solemnitas , in the Kyrie part.

Anyway, I admire his clear textures, his mostly clear use of the texts and voices(Except perhaps Spanish, which in works like some of Ultimos Ritos and Canciones Españolas is difficult to understand it even as Native Speaker though it was mostly Old Spanish but anyway…),the languages he employed from Greek to Arabic to Russian to Spanish to English to French to German to Italian to Latin to Hebrew... the use of extreme voices (very low BASS, like Basso Profundo and very High Male Voice like Countertenor not to mention High notes in the Soprano for his muse Patricia Rozario) and very innovative and imaginative use of textures for instruments and also a sense of drama and vastness only surpassed by Messiaen mastodontic last works. So, this is my portrait of the composer. I hope you like it and I hope it was ok and not very bombastic.

Bernabé