So sad to hear that the composer John Tavener has died, at just 69 years of age.
I was listening to him only yesterday on Radio 4’s Start the Week, together with Jeanette Winterson, Andrew Marr and John Drury in a most fascinating discussion on the subject of art and faith.
The sense he had, of living on borrowed time after coming ‘back from the dead’ following a series of unexplained heart attacks, reminded me of another favourite composer, Alfred Schnittke, who died still more prematurely at the age of 64.
I just found this wonderful interview Tavener gave to Tom Service at the Manchester International Music Festival in July:
His physical burdens seem to disappear the moment he starts talking about music, though: his face beams as he tells me about the epiphanies he had while listening to Mozart and Stravinsky at the age of 12. “They made me want to write music,” he says.
As an artist, Tavener has much in common with composers such as Gorecki, Kancheli and Silvestrov, who began their careers as modernists but later found expression in a looser, more overtly expressive style that might be described as ‘lyrical minimalism’. It’s so interesting to read how he was beginning to find renewed inspiration in the more intellectually rigorous late works of Beethoven and Elliot Carter.
Britain has been blessed with whole generations of incredibly gifted composers throughout the twentieth century. Tavener’s special gift lay in touching so many who previously believed they couldn’t understand or find a way into contemporary music.
Sleep well, John. And thank you, so much.
John Tavener in 2005 phoyo by Clestu