Song for Athene

The music of Song for Athene came fully formed to its composer in 1983 at the funeral of the young actor Athene Hariades. “In the graveyard after the funeral, I heard the repeated Alleluias and then I heard a melody for the verses,” Tavener recalled. He wrote it down when he arrived home and later added lyrics chosen by his spiritual mentor, Mother Thekla, a Russian-born Orthodox nun based in the north of England. She selected lines from William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet and the Orthodox funeral service, and lightly revised them to serve as companion verses to six of the work’s seven Alleluias. Song for Athene reached a vast global television audience when it was sung for the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, at Westminster Abbey in 1997. The work’s prayers for intercession and reflections on life’s fleeting nature, like “a shadow and a dream”, are intensified by the chant-like simplicity and cumulative power of Tavener’s music. The composer unfolds his recurrent Alleluia melody over an unbroken drone bass and reserves the force of full choir for the final verse, marking its promise of heaven’s rewards with mighty chordal harmonies.