The Protecting Veil

Painted icons—gilded Madonnas and jewel-coloured images of Christ—are at the heart of Orthodox worship. But what if you are a composer, not an artist? Is it possible to paint an icon in sound? That was the question to which John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil (1987) was the luminous response. What began as a commission from London cellist Steven Isserlis for a 10-minute piece soon grew into a far larger work: an eight-movement, 45-minute meditation for solo cello and string orchestra on the Virgin Mary in all her many aspects. “I have tried to capture some of the cosmic power of the Mother of God,” Tavener explained. The result is a piece by turns infinitely fragile and tender, ecstatic, expansive and heavy with grief. The two outer movements are portraits of Mary, the solo cello—which Tavener ensures “never stops singing”—supplying her radiant voice. The continuous sequence of inner movements each represents a distinct episode in her history. We move from her birth through the Incarnation and Resurrection, arriving finally at the 10th-century miracle of the Protecting Veil, in which she appeared to shelter Greek Christians from invading Saracen forces. Nominated for the Mercury Prize in 1992, the work caught the imagination of new listeners, not just translating but amplifying the spiritual minimalism of the composer’s choral music, painting on a larger, more richly textured canvas.