John
Tavener first came to public attention in 1968 with the premiere of his
oratorio The Whale at the inaugural concert of the London Sinfonietta.
The Beatles subsequently recorded this on their Apple label. Although
Tavener’s avant-garde style of the seventies contrasts with the
contemplative beauty of his works for which he is best known, the seeds
of the language he would later adopt were already in evidence. His
early compositions, notably Thérèse (1973) commissioned by the Royal
Opera House and A Gentle Spirit (1977) after the short story by
Dostoyevsky, showed that spirituality and mysticism were to be his
primary sources of inspiration.
His
conversion to the Orthodox Church in 1977 resulted from his growing
conviction that Eastern traditions retained a primordial essence that
the west had lost. Works such as The Lamb (1982), and the large-scale
choral work Resurrection (1989) date from this period. It was in 1989
that Tavener once again came firmly into the limelight, when the Proms
premiere of The Protecting Veil introduced his music to a new audience.
The opera Mary of Egypt, premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1992.
The same year, a major documentary, ‘Glimpses of Paradise’ was
broadcast on BBC2. His 50th birthday year was marked in 1994 by the
BBC’s Ikons Festival, as well as another major Proms commission - The
Apocalypse. In 1997, the performance of Song for Athene at the close of
Princess Diana’s funeral showed that the profound effect of his music
reached far beyond just the concert-going public.
The
premiere of A New Beginning played out the final minutes of 1999 in
London’s Millennium Dome; on 4 January 2000, Fall and Resurrection was
premiered at St Paul’s Cathedral, broadcast on both television and
radio; he received a Knighthood in the Millennium Honours List, and
later the same year, London’s South Bank Centre presented a major
festival of his music. Overseas commissions increased, notably with
Lamentations and Praises (2000) for the San Francisco-based Chanticleer
(whose recording of the work secured for Tavener the Grammy award for
Best Classical Contemporary Composition in 2003) and Ikon of Eros
(2001) for the Minnesota Orchestra. Tavener
was then led to look for inspiration from alternative sources by his
interest in the universalist philosophy of the late Swiss metaphysician
Fritjhof Schuon, which embraces all great religious traditions. This
change in direction is manifest in works written since 2001 - notably
The Veil of the Temple, Lament for Jerusalem (which uses both Christian
and Islamic texts), and Hymn of Dawn, based on Hindu, Sufi, Christian
and Jewish texts, as well as the music of the American Indians. Other
works include the song-cycle Schuon Lieder; Pratrirupa, for piano and
strings; and numerous choral works including Elizabeth Full of Grace, a
commission from HRH the Prince of Wales. Sir John is forming an
important collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor for his
company Random Dance, and working on a large-scale choral work The
Beautiful Names, celebrating the ninety-nine names for God according to
Islamic tradition.
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