Sir John Tavener Essentials

After an early start as a maverick composer of such works as The Whale, which mashes up musical and non-musical sounds, the English composer John Tavener (1944-2013) radically transformed his style when he converted to the Greek Orthodox Church. Song of Athene, performed to remarkable effect at the 1997 funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, is typical of his ritualistic choral music with its long sustained bass notes and Byzantine-style chant. Even The Lamb, his strange yet tender setting of William Blake, is not entirely outside that tradition—listen to Funeral Ikos and you can hear a clear family kinship. Tavener successfully transferred his Byzantine-inspired style to purely instrumental music, notably his haunting cello and orchestra work The Protecting Veil.