Eternal Memory : Work information
- Composers
- John (Kenneth) Tavener ( Music, Images,)
- Performed by
- Raphael Wallfisch (Cello), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Justin Brown (Conductor)
This work
- Work name
- Eternal Memory
- Work number
- n/a
- Key
- n/a
- Genre
- A
- Composed
- 1991-00-00 02:00:00
This recording
- Label
- Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
- Producer
- Alan Peters
- Engineer
- Dick Lewzey
- Recording date
- n/a
The Composers
John (Kenneth) Tavener
Tavener's calm and thoughtful music has caused him to be called a 'holy minimalist' and has drawn comparisons to Arvo Part and Henryk Gorecki. But Tavener has written in many different styles, and was also a flower boy of the 60s. He was born on January 28th 1944 in North London, into a religious family who encouraged his early musical talents. He won a scholarship to Highgate School, where he was friends with the nascent choral composer John Rutter. Studying at the Royal Academy of Music, Tavener decided to devote himself to composition rather than performance. He was conducting the choir and playing the organ at St John's Presbyterian Church at the time, and was very keen on Victorian hymns and religious music. But the magic of the sixties had an effect too.
He composed and conducted his opera The Cappemakers when he was twenty, and his cantata Cain and Abel had been performed by the London Bach Society for broadcast before he had finished at the Royal Academy. But it was with The Whale in 1968 that Tavener shot to fame. It used prerecorded tapes, amplified percussion and loudhailers in its telling of the story of Jonah. After hearing it, John Lennon signed Tavener to the Beatles' Apple label. Also that year In Alium was performed, and was reviewed as a musical love-in by The Guardian the next day. But Tavener's interest in traditional religiosity inclined him away from trendy techniques. He joined the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977, and subsequent compositions have been tailored to church liturgy, becoming like "icons with notes rather than colours".
The Protecting Veil (1989), an instrumental piece for cello and strings, resurrected a career that had declined somewhat due to whiskey and writer's block. It was premiered at the Proms, and went to the top of the classical charts for several months. The hymn Akathist of Thanksgiving (1994) is regarded by some as Tavener's greatest work, and his fame spread the world over when his choral piece Song for Athene was played at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1998. In 2000 he was knighted for services to music.
Track listing
-
With great peace and serenity
9:23 min
Notes
Written in 1991 for cello and strings, Tavener's Eternal Memory takes the theme from 1990's Thrinos for solo cello, and uses it as the basis for further variation. A meditation on death and the remembrance of Paradise Lost, the middle section has an "insubstantial and illusory quality" according to the composer; the serene closing section "looks forward to the unknown Paradise promised to us, yet to come...".
(If the theme sounds familiar, it bears a striking, and accidental, resemblance to the traditional Welsh lullaby Suo Gan, used in John Williams' score to the 1987 film Empire of the Sun)
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