John Tavener


Photo: Richard Haughton © Chester Music

John Tavener was born in London in January 1944 and showed his musical talents at an early age. He studied with Sir Lennox Berkeley and David Lumsdaine at the Royal Academy of Music and won several major prizes for composition. With the première of his cantata, The Whale, in 1968, Tavener revealed himself as one of the most original and independent composers of his generation. Subsequent works, strongly influenced by Stravinskky and Messiaen, revealed a marked fascination for ritual and mysticism.

Essential to understanding Tavener's music is the collection of choral music which occupies the largest section of his entire catalogue. Many of Tavener's works are readily accessible to competent amateur choirs and include the series of carols, The Lamb (1982), A Nativity (1988), Love Bade Me Welcome (1985), Today the Virgin (1989) and anthems such as He Hath Entered the Heaven (1982), Two Hymns to the Mother of God (1985), Ikon of the Crucifixion (1989) and Annuciation (1992). His setting of the Russian Orthodox liturgy in English, The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (1978) was written a year after his conversion and is one of several large-scale choral works which specifically celebrate his Orthodox faith. In 1984 he set the text of the Orthodox Vigil Service making luse of Byzantine chant and medieval Russian polyphony and in 1988, the Akathist of Thanksgiving was written to commemorate the millennium of the church in Russia.

There is no doubting the sincerity of Tavener's art or the commitment to his beliefs. In essence, his work chronicles a gradual and consistent refinement of musical language which attempts to discover a gnosis, a lost, secret knowledge.

Other commissions in recent years include Svyati (1995) for Steven Isserlis, Agraphon for soprano Patricia Rozario and string orchestra commissioned to form the centrepiece of a Tavener Festival in Athens, Vlepondas (1996) commissioned by the European Cultural Centre of Delphi, Hidden Face (1996) for the City of London Sinfonia, The Last Discourse (1997) premièred at St. Paul's Cathedral in March 1998, Eternity Sunrise (1997) commissioned by the Academy of Ancient Music and premiered at the City of London Festival in 1998 and the epic Fall and Resurrection, premièred at St. Paul's Cathedral in January 2000. In October 2000 London's South Bank Centre presented "Ikons of Light", a major three week festival dedicated to his music.

John Tavener received a knighthood in the 2000 New Year's Honours lists for services to music.