John Tavener

John Tavener (1944–2013) was an English composer whose conversion to Russian Orthodoxy in 1977 transformed his music as completely as anything in 20th-century religious art. He had written striking early works — the cantata The Whale (1968) was recorded by the Beatles on Apple Records and made him briefly famous as an avant-garde enfant terrible — but the Orthodox conversion gave him the spiritual architecture he had been searching for. Everything after it is essentially sacred music, shaped by Byzantine chant, Russian liturgical tradition, and a theology of beauty as theological truth.

Song for Athene (1993), a brief a cappella setting for choir, became one of the most widely heard pieces of the 1990s when it was performed at the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997 — its setting of words from Hamlet ("May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest") sung while the whole world watched. Tavener was uncomfortable with that kind of fame: the music was not meant as spectacle but as prayer.

His larger works — The Protecting Veil (1987) for solo cello and string orchestra, Ikon of Light (1984) for choir and string trio, The Veil of the Temple (2003) for an all-night prayer service — attempt something different from Western concert music: not entertainment or even aesthetic experience but liturgical function. Whether they succeed outside religious context is a question each listener must answer. They are beautiful, whatever else they are.

StyleByzantine chant influence, long sustained tones, sacred simplicity. Music that stands outside time rather than moving through it.

Listen: Song for Athene (King’s College Choir recording). Then The Protecting Veil (Steven Isserlis, cello). Then Ikon of Light for choir and string trio.