John Tavener: A continuum bridge to God

From the Greek island of Evvoia, Andre Jute presents
the deepest interview ever published with composer John Tavener

John Tavener's music was performed at Princess Diana's funeral. He is without doubt the world's most famous living "classical" composer. Compositions by Tavener are recorded as quickly as he writes them, and his CDs have huge sales. These three facts define a pop icon. But, as always with this enigmatic composer, the bare facts are utterly at variance with the spirituality of the man, the quality of his music, and his life-enhancing impact on millions.

"I didn't know Diana. I know the Prince of Wales a little, and regard myself as his friend. The piece performed at Diana's funeral was written for a Greek girl who was killed in an accident. There is no such thing as coincidence."

I pull him up on that. "Yes, I truly believe that," he insists."The artist in our time has to rediscover the intellectual organ--of the heart! St Gregory of Nissa said that only the spontaneous exists in the eye of God. We've become too clever, too sophisticated. We've lost something."

Taverner is already ten paces away, ancient tracks in the sand, his mind leapfrogging centuries, making connections. "Yeats is the greatest poet of the twentieth century. I love the Irish. The original Celtic church is clearly connected to the Orthodox Church, which is central to my life and work."

But your music has nothing to do with today's Roman church, maestro, I think but do not say.

"I have a tremendous regard for tradition. Tradition leads us to God," Tavener says as if he can read my mind. "In the Roman Church, ethics and morality are vastly overrated, and they undervalue the knowledge revealed to mystics in the desert. That attitude is reflected in rationalist art from the Renaissance forward."

Tavener is a fiendishly complicated simple man who seeks a simple truth simply because it is true. He is no pop idol trying to please everyone. "Even though I'm not a mystic, I think of myself as an anti-rationalist." He thinks the Dark Ages started after Gregorian Chant! "With the Renaissance we entered the age of the ego."

Hmm. Tavener's Rolls-Bentley is hardly a humble motorcar. I rap out a few indisputed facts of his life.  In 1965, aged 21, John Taverner took London by storm with the premiere of The Whale. He was taken up by the Beatles, the only "classical" composer sponsored by them, and promoted like a pop star. As late as 1992, he was the only non-rock nomination for the inuagural Mercury Music Prize.

But Tavener is not interested in discussing fame as an abstract. He has elevated himself onto a plane far beyond mere cleverness and talent. "Music is an elemental act of worship. If I have any purpose in living it is to reinstate the sacredness of art. But I have gotten into enough trouble already talking about 'relating to primordial origins'!"

By "primordial origins" he means God.

He is a deeply religious man. "Though I joined the Russian Orthodox Church only in 1977, religion has always been central to my life. I knew what I wanted to do with my life when I heard Stravinsky's Canticum Sacrum."

Is the appeal of the Orthodox their mysticism? "Mystics sniff at restaurants but never go in to taste the food. I'm not a mystic."

For an almost holy man, Tavener is quick to score an aggressive debating point. "Music should dissect us, not us music.  You said it yourself earlier: Art and creativity have been destroyed by those who create nothing beyond dissections of the work of others."

John Tavener lives in Sussex with his wife Mariana and their two daughters, 5 and 3, and on the Greek island of Evvoia, where I have him pinned down. "I feel more at home here than anywhere else in the world. But if the weather were better in Ireland, I would live in Ireland--and in Greece."

Studies at the Royal Academy of Music imbued Tavener with knowledge of post-medieval music but no awe for its achievements. "Humanism reached a peak with Handel, especially in Theodora and other late pieces. Beethoven, Haydn, Brahms, even Mozart, I find them deeply boring. Their appeal is all to the head; they leave my heart hungry."

Who fills your heart with joy, maestro? "Patricia Rozario connects with my music precisely because she's Indian. She alone can pick up the extra dimension beyond the note. For me, Patricia *is* my music. When she just touches my notes, for some reason something extraordinary happens."

John Taverner's setting of Kathleen Raine's poem The World will receive its premiere performance by Patricia Rozario and the RTE Vanbrugh String Quartet on Friday 2 July at Bantry House during the West Cork Chamber Music Festival.

Why did Tavener choose to set this difficult poem? "I set The World as a gift of love for Kathleen Raine's 91st birthday. I admire her tremendously as a Blake scholar. She stands up for traditional and sacred values in literature. She believes the world is forever in a state of spontaneous creation around us."

Taverner characteristically  doesn't see that universal truth as an abstract notion beyond the reach of musical expression. "The music for The World is written as four nodes and a great stillness." I don't ask him if he understands that in a lesser composer the very attempt would be hubris. The question would probably baffle him. He has his direct line to God, and his own humility. "The drone in my music, represents the presence of the Divine. It is an Indian idea I have borrowed."

Tavener is a repeat visitor to the West Cork Chamber Music Festival. "Ah, Bantry! I love the whole experience of the festival so much, it is difficult to separate the place and the music."

We talk of restuarants in and near Bantry. For Tavener food, music, religion, love, family, performers, every good thing in life, is a continuum bridge to God.