Ever since I picked up a copy of Innocence, Sir John Tavener has been on my radar as one of the best contemporary composers. At that time, I bought copies of most of his earlier works, and found my favorite to be his Akathist of Thanksgiving, and I continued to buy his titles as they came out. One of the things I really appreciated was that Tavener was fundamentally a religious composer, and that he was able to mix Orthodox spirituality and hymns with modern Western composition styles and techniques. Being a convert to Orthodoxy, he never lost sight of his origins, and he never felt the need to abandon what he thought was the best of the Western tradition. Indeed, his two choral pieces, The Tyger and The Lamb, are among his greatest works, and come from the poems of Blake.
But something happened. He became an award winning composer (and he deserved those awards). He became famous, especially for his Song for Athene used at Diana’s funeral. He didn’t want to stagnate and continue to do things as he has always done. He became more and more experimental; while I could recognize and understand why, more often than not, I found these works less to my liking. I stopped buying his CDs. I kept looking at them, and seeing what he was up to, but never found one to buy. I appreciated much of what he seemed to be doing, especially his desire to look for what is universal in religion, and to try to use that in his music. This week, I decided to pick up one of his newer CDs, Lament for Jerusalem.
There is much to like about Lament for Jerusalem. Aspects of it remind me of his earlier works, while he continues to have an edge that he found in his later years. One thing I really appreciated about it is that he is trying to create an inter-religious lament for the city. The description on the cover explains this well, “Sir John Tavener’s Lament for Jerusalem, described by the composer as a mystical love song, brings together Christian, Judaic and Islamic texts. Sung in Greek and English, it is both a cri de coeur at the loss of peace in a place where religions once co-existed in harmony, and an affirmation of the power of love to bring together all ‘who seek God, from whatever tradition they come.’”
The textual choices are intriguing: Psalm 137: By the Waters of Babylon (one of my favorite parts of Matins), The Prologue of Masnavi by Rumi, Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem from Matthew 23 and Luke 19, and a supplication to the Theotokos given in a unique English rendition:
Since thou receivest the supplication of sinners,
O virgin mother Theotokos,
“Allah hath preferred thee above all women”:
deliver from torment all us who praise three.
The texts flow together well enough, but the choral arrangement sometimes makes it difficult for one to understand what is being said. This is a problem I often have with choral compositions, and so it is not unique here. The style of the arrangement might make the music seem to be repetitive: that comes from the nature of the work itself. But within it, as the lament slowly builds, there are times I feel very moved by what is going on. It is not his best work, but it is one of my favorites of what he has produced this millennium.
7/10.
Now I wonder what his “Universal Mass” is all about.
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