John Tavener

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Sir John Kenneth Tavener (28 January 1944-2012) was an English composer known for his extensive number of sacred compositions, including The Protecting Veil, Song for Athene, and The Lamb. Tavener's cantata The Whale, which premiered in 1968, came to fame.

Then, who was aged 24, was dubbed "the musical discovery of the year," by The Guardian, while The Times said he was "among the finest creative talents of his generation." He made his reputation as one of the top-selling and well-known composers of his time, most notably for his album The Protecting Veil, which was released by cellist Steven Isserlis, and Song for Athene, which was performed at Princess Diana's funeral.

In Paolo Sorrentino's film The Great Beauty's soundtrack, the Lamb appears.

In 2000, Tavener was knighted for his contributions to music, and he was named recipient of the Ivor Novello Award.

In 2001, Sarum College granted him an Honorary Fellowship.

Early life and education

Tavener was born in Wembley, London, on January 28, 1944. His parents owned a family building business and his father was also an organist at St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Frognal, Hampstead. At the age of 12, Tavener was taken to Glyndebourne to hear Mozart's The Magic Flute, a work he adored for the remainder of his life. Canticum Sacrum, Stravinsky's most recent work, was released in the same year as "the piece that woke me up and made me want to be a composer."

Tavener attended Highgate School, where a fellow pupil, John Rutter, was a music scholar. The school choir was often employed by the BBC in jobs demanding boys' voices, so Tavener obtained choral experience in Mahler's Third Symphony and Orff's Carmina Burana. He began to compose at Highgate and then became a sufficiently good pianist to perform Beethoven's second and third movements, as well as the National Youth Orchestra's Piano Concerto No. 111. 2. He served as organist and choirmaster at St John's Presbyterian Church, Kensington, in 1961 (now St Mark's Coptic Orthodox Church), a position he held for 14 years.

In 1962, Tavener attended the Royal Academy of Music, where his tutors included Sir Lennox Berkeley. He wanted to abandon the piano and concentrate on composition during his studies at MIT.

The Whale and early operas

Tavener first came to fame in 1968 with his dramatic cantata The Whale, based on Jonah's Old Testament tale. It was premiered at the London Sinfonietta's debut concert, which was also the opening concert of Queen Elizabeth Hall. Roger Tavener's younger brother, Roger, was then doing some building work on Ringo Starr's house, and the Beatles' desire, after gaining the musician's fascination, compelled them to have The Whale released by Apple Music and released in 1970. Tavener began teaching at Trinity College of Music, London, in the following year. A Celtic Requiem, a Tavener work, was among Apple's unveiled works, which thrilled Benjamin Britten enough to convince Covent Garden to commission an opera from Tavener. Thérèse was the end result, which was compared to a libretto by playwright Gerard McLarnon's: the opera was still too static to be a hit drama when it was staged in 1979.

Tavener was also deeply affected by his brief 1974 marriage to Greek dancer Victoria Maragopoulou. His chamber opera A Gentle Spirit (1977), with a libretto by McLarnon based on a Fyodor Dostoyevsky tale, is concerned about a pawnbroker whose marriage is disfunctioned to the point that his wife commits suicide. It has been described as "far superior to Thérèse," according to the programme's internal drama, which is more appropriate for the role. McLarnon had been a convert for many years, but it also touched on Russian Orthodoxy, which McLarnon had been interested in for many years.

Personal life

He married Greek dancer Victoria Maragopoulou in 1974, but it only lasted eight months. In 1991, he married Maryanna Schaefer, with whom he had three children, Theodora, Sofia, and Orlando. He suffered with serious health issues throughout his life. He had a stroke in his thirties, heart surgery, and the removal of a tumor in his forties, as well as two other heart attacks that left him extremely fragile. In 1990, he was diagnosed with Marfan syndrome. On BBC Radio 4 in October 2008, Lady Tavener submitted a charitable appeal on behalf of the Marfan Trust.

Avener was involved in classic cars, owning an Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire, a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, a Jaguar XJ6, and a Bentley Mulsanne Turbo.

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Later career

Tavener's subsequent explorations of Russian and Greek culture resulted in Akhmatova Requiem, which did not achieve success either at its Edinburgh Festival premiere in 1981 or its Proms' performance the next week, where many of the audience members remained before it was finished. Tavener's short unaccompanied four-part choral setting of William Blake's "The Lamb," which was written one afternoon in 1982 for his nephew Simon's third birthday, was of greater longevity. This basic homophonic work is often performed as a Christmas carol. The Akathist of Thanksgiving (1987), written in honor of the Russian Orthodox Church's millennium; The Protecting Veil, first performed by cellist Steven Isserlis and the London Symphony Orchestra at the 1989 Proms; and Song for Athene (1993). Mother Thekla, a Russian Orthodox abbess who served Tavener as a long-serving spiritual advisor until her death in 2011. When performing at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, Athene's song for Athene gained international attention.

The Fall and Resurrection of Tavener, first performed in 2000, featured instruments such as ram's horn, Ney flute, and kaval. It was dedicated to the Prince of Wales, with whom Tavener maintained a lasting friendship. Ikon of Eros (2003) was commissioned by violinist Jorja Fleezanis, then concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra, with vocal soloists and the Minnesota Chorale, and recording at the Cathedral of St. Paul conducted by Paul Goodwin. Tavener created The Veil of the Temple, an unusually large work based on scriptures from a variety of faiths in 2003. It is regarded by Tavener as "the most significant achievement of my life" and is scheduled for four choirs, several orchestras, and soloists, and will lasts at least seven hours. In 2004, Björk's book Prayer of the Heart was written for and performed by the Heart. The Beautiful Names, a setting of the 99 names of God in the Muslim faith, was sung in Arabic in 2007.

Tavener left Orthodox Christianity to investigate several other faiths, including Hinduism and Islam, and became a pupil of Frithjof Schuon, according to the British press. "I hit a point where everything I wrote was terribly austere and hidebound by the Orthodox Church's tonal system, and I felt the need, in my music at least, to become more universalist: to have in other colors and other languages." "I hasn't abandoned Orthodoxy," the interviewer said at the time. "He is devotedly Christian." Tavener characterized himself as "essentially Orthodox" on the BBC Four television show "Sacred Music in 2010. On Start the Week, he reiterated his desire to investigate other faiths as well as his devotion to the Orthodox Christian faith, which was only days before his death and broadcast on November 11, 2013.

Sir David Pountney, the Welsh National Opera's former artistic director, reported in 2020 that Tavener's last opera, Krishna (which was completed in 2005 but not in manuscript form), would be staged by Grange Park Opera in 2024. The project will be directed by Pountney himself.

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