Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Sue Lawley
Composer inspired by the Orthodox Church; his earliest works were recorded with Beatles' support, and his cello piece The Protecting Veil topped the classical c
Eight records
The keepsakes
The book
The Apothegmata (Sayings of the Desert Fathers)
because of their incredible terseness, their incredible simplicity, and at the same time the enormous toughness and a a a depth of compassion that I think we can't even imagine nowadays.
The luxury
an upright piano, stuffed with manuscript, bottles of Greek red wine, and um as much Greek fresh garlic as possible.
In conversation
Presenter asks
How surprised were you to hit the number one spot with The Protecting Veil? Was it something you had hoped to achieve back in the sixties under the auspices of the Beatles?
No, not really. I think um as far as the protecting veil was concerned, it was uh it took me totally by surprise. Uh the only hint I got of it was when the BBC Symphony Orchestra were rehearsing it and they kept on clapping at the end of the piece and I thought what's the matter with them? They don't normally clap like this and uh so I I got a hint of the fact that people liked it, or certainly musicians liked it.
Presenter asks
You approach your music as an act of prayer. Does that mean you don't have to pray in the formal sense? Do you do that instead of getting down on your knees?
Yeah. I don't think I know very much about prayer. I mean, the only kind of prayers I said would I tend to say, have mercy on me, I'm a worm. Those were the kind of prayers that the Desert Fathers said. I mean, they were the masters of prayer, and they're very, very short sentences. I pray for the dead and I pray for the living, but I have no idea wh whether it has any effect. I don't know.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 2
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
Speaker 2
The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.
Presenter
My Costaway this week is a composer. Born and brought up in the suburbs of North London, he draws his inspiration from the Orthodox Church, of which he's a member. He was a precocious talent. One of his earliest works was recorded successfully when he was only twenty four, thanks to the support of the Beatles. Dogged by ill health throughout his life he's now fifty he approaches music as an act of prayer. He's won the admiration of both serious musicians and the general public, and last year his work for cello and strings, The Protecting Veil, originally premiered at the Proms, held the number one place in the classical music charts for several months. He is John Taven
Presenter
How surprised were you to hit the number one spot, John, with the protecting veil? Was it something you'd perhaps hoped to achieve back in the sixties under the auspices of the Beatles?
John Tavener
No, not really. I think um as far as the protecting veil was concerned, it was uh it took me totally by surprise. Uh the only hint I got of it was when the BBC Symphony Orchestra were rehearsing it and they kept on clapping at the end of the piece and I thought what's the matter with them? They don't normally clap like this and uh so I I got a hint of the fact that people liked it, or certainly musicians liked it.
Presenter
What do you think it was about it? I mean, you must have tried to explain it to yourself.
John Tavener
The only possible explanation that I feel that it might touch a nerve in people insofar as it deals with a sacred subject. Maybe there is a great need for a return to the sacred and and for a return of a sort of primordial tradition which I think has become lost.
Presenter
Because we should say for those people who don't know it, it's very long and slow and ecstatic and luminous. I mean, are those the kinds of words you'd use? That that opening note of the cello goes on for the best part of a minute, one long note that you think will never cease.
John Tavener
That's right. It's very connected with chant. I think there are an awful lot of artists around who who are very good at uh leading us into hell. Um and who are they? I don't want to say. But um I think one of Thomas Beecham's best remarks was um you know, I don't want to be left in hell, I'd rather someone could show me the way to paradise.
Presenter
Who are they?
Presenter
Hm. And is th is that what you hope you're doing?
John Tavener
I don't sit down and and sort of think, Oh, I I must show people the way the paradise after all, I don't know what paradise is, and I haven't a clue whether I'll ever go there. I I just feel I I do feel a kind of vocation to write, and I feel that when I'm writing it's the only time when I'm happy, is when I'm writing music.
Presenter
Well now you, in order to work, require a contemplative lifestyle. You love the sun. You spend several months of the year in Greece. You you um these days wear fairly loose, flowing white clothes, you like simplicity. You are sitting before me the ideal castaway, aren't you?
John Tavener
In some ways, I think I'd I'd love being cast away. The only thing is I'm I'm utterly hopeless. I have no practical sense whatsoever, so I would not in any way try to escape. Maybe if there was a passing liner, I think I might wave wave my hand. But I think I'd be very happy. I'd be in the sun, I would uh I'd have plenty of time to contemplate, as you say, and think. Um no, I think I'd love it.
Presenter
You'd have your music, of course. What's the first piece of music you might play?
John Tavener
I think I would like to have a section from the Akatist of Thanksgiving, partly because I feel metaphysically very close to it. The words are very beautiful. They were written by a Russian priest awaiting his death in a prison camp, and he says these words, I see your cross, your cross for my sake, my spirit in dust before the cross. And it's from that point of failure, or seeming failure and horror, that love with a capital L or divine love is the only way it can begin.
Presenter
And it's your music.
John Tavener
And it's my music.
Speaker 4
This one I know.
Presenter
James Bowman singing part of My Castaway John Tavener's Akathist with the B B C Symphony Orchestra and Singers and the Westminster Abbey Choir, conducted by Martin Neary.
Presenter
I said, John, that you approach your music as an act of prayer. So the act of composition makes you feel close to God. Does that mean you don't have to pray in the formal sense? Do you do you do that instead of getting down on your knees?
John Tavener
Yeah.
John Tavener
I don't think I know very much about prayer. I mean, the only kind of prayers I said would I tend to say, have mercy on me, I'm a worm. Those were the kind of prayers that the Desert Fathers said. I mean, they were the masters of prayer, and they're very, very short sentences. I pray for the dead and I pray for the living, but I have no idea wh whether it has any effect. I don't know.
Presenter
But but you're also doing your duty by God in compose.
John Tavener
I feel that's the most important thing, that I'm actually u using this talent in whether whether I'm successful at it or not, or whether I in the long run, you know, whether I'm using it to the full. Only God can judge that. I no one else can judge that.
Presenter
How do you compose? Do you do you sing? Do you hear it in your head?
John Tavener
I think that all music must be singable, which obviously puts me at great odds with an awful lot of twentieth century music. Uh it all must have a singing line and must be realizable on the on the human voice.
Presenter
So you hear it in your head, it comes out of your mouth, as it were, and and then you write it down. I mean you
Presenter
You compose it in your head and through your voice first.
John Tavener
Yes. Uh well, it's not just my voice. I I have to well, if I'm in Greece, it is just my voice, because uh uh there are no hardly any pianos on Greek islands. When I'm at home in Sussex I have a swivel chair and I I I turn round from my desk to the piano, and um it's a mixture of singing and and and testing the sound.
Presenter
And how long have you been doing that? What was the first piece you ever composed? And how old were you?
John Tavener
The first important piece the first piece that I actually is in the catalogue. I I composed when I was still at school. It was a trombone sonata. I wrote it for the headmaster'cause he played the trombone.
Presenter
Pack
Presenter
But hardly a a lyrical instrument, hardly a
John Tavener
No, and it wasn't uh not at all a lyrical piece. It was quite jazzy and um I think the influences of of of Gershwin and uh And what did the head think of it?
Presenter
And what did the head think of it?
John Tavener
I think he was uh he was very flattered by it b because um he he let me off all games and allowed me to just play the organ all day long in St Michael's Church, Highgate.
Presenter
But but were you a particularly devout boy? I mean, would it have been clear that you were destined for something contemplative or or a religious life?
John Tavener
To be clear.
John Tavener
Or
John Tavener
Not really. I I I I think that at the age of twelve I uh two very important things happened. I I heard the first broadcast performance from Venice of Stravinsky's Canticum Sacrum. Also my godmother Lady Burley took me to Gleinborn to hear the magic flute. And those two pieces of Western music have perhaps had uh the strongest influence on me and I can see why they led me in later years to the music of the Middle East, of Byzantine music, of chant, and led me o in a sense away from the whole Western ethos of music.
Presenter
Shall we have your second record?
John Tavener
I think my second record would be the opening of Bach's Saint Matthew Passion. I used to be taken to the Albert Hall by my parents during Lent, almost annually, to hear Bach's Saint Matthew Passion, conducted by Doctor Reginald Jakes, and I would like to hear the opening of St. Matthew Passion with those original forces.
Presenter
The opening of Bach St. Matthew Passion with the Jakes Orchestra conducted by Doctor Reginald Jakes.
Presenter
So you composed a lot, John Tavenagh. You were a precocious talent, as I said. But you set out to be a concert pianist, didn't you? What happened?
John Tavener
One day I remember very vividly I was learning one of the late Beethoven sonatas and and I can see it with hindsight that maybe it was a symbolic gesture. I just flung it across the m the room and said I I made one of the few decisions I have made in my life, uh that I wanted to put all my eggs into one basket and be a composer. Um it was a terrific risk.
Speaker 2
The maid
Presenter
But you threw it away because you couldn't you were defeated by it or
John Tavener
I'm very much fine.
John Tavener
No, I think I was I think there was mixture of reasons. My heart was not totally with Beethoven. Um I could see what a great sort of uh he was the greatest humanistic composer that ever lived, but um I I can see with hindsight now that I I could never have had the nerv I I would have been dead long ago if I'd if I'd if I'd continued being because I wouldn't have had the nerves to actually go on stage or move from one city. I I think the life of concert pianists or conductors must be absolute hell.
Presenter
So it was a major decision, and it was a good one.
John Tavener
Yes, I think so.
Presenter
So you set about composing. How did you come to know the Beatles?
John Tavener
I think I kn I I knew independently Yoko Ono. That was how I I met John Lennon. In fact, I think I was wi invited I don't think I was invited to an American's house in Hereford Square and and he said that John Lennon and Yoko Ono were going to be there. And um we we we sat on the floor most of the evening. He prepared a huge dinner, but they brought their own macrobiotic food. So we sat on the floor and played each other's tapes. John Lennon seemed to like what he heard of my music and he rang me from his car the next day and and said they would like to sort of sign me up. Then I um it it took Ringo actually, who was much more pragmatic than John Lennon. Ringo actually brought out the whale and the Celtic Requiem.
Presenter
But the whale I mean again can we describe it? It was again rather surrealistic. If you say it was shades of the Beatles in your music, I suppose shades of yellow submarine. Yeah.
John Tavener
Yes, yes, yes. I wasn't influenced by them, and I don't think.
Presenter
Were they influenced by you, perhaps?
John Tavener
I I don't know. I don't know.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Did you look a bit like a Beetle at the time? I mean, I've seen pictures of you guys.
John Tavener
I suppose I did. Yes, I suppose I did. I think it was a sort of reaction against the what I thought was was the the pauface serial music of the time and and and the pauface look of the serial composers of the time.
Presenter
By Ku. Here we go.
John Tavener
I hear both of mentioned things.
Presenter
But but you were you wore the flares and the big collar shirts and you had the long floppy hair. Pink suits indeed.
John Tavener
Yeah.
John Tavener
We have pinks.
John Tavener
I I think I probably did. Yeah, it horrifies me to think of it, but I d I think I probably did.
Presenter
And did you have the snazzy curves to match?
John Tavener
I had a thing about old big cars, I don't know why. The first car I ever had was an Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire, which I must have bought for about a hundred pounds or something. Then then I got a Bentley Mark VI, and I bought that without a front seat. I mean, there was a seat for me, but th you couldn't have a passenger. And it really went on from there. And I've always had a passion for quality cars. I hate modernism. I hate everything about modernism. I hate modern cars. I hate modern life. Maybe it's my silly little protest and insofar as I go for these co quality older cars. I don't know.
John Tavener
Let's have some more music.
John Tavener
Well, when I was three and my mother was away giving birth to my brother, um so my nanny told me, I played without ceasing a seventy-eight record. On one side was um Nymphs and Shepherds by Purcell, on the other side was Brother Come and Dance with Me from Hansel and Gretel. This music sung by these uh, I think fifties or forties children with their wonderful acc English accents and takes me straight back to my childhood.
Speaker 4
Tell me what I have to do, cause I'm not afraid of you.
Presenter
The dance duet from Hansel and Gretel, sung by the Manchester Schools Choir, and one side of the seventy eight that you played over and over again. So even aged three then, you had a a a sense of ritual, did you?
John Tavener
I think I must have done, um, because uh if you look at the seventy eight now, I I I actually I haven't I I've lost it, but I the last time I saw it you could hardly see any surface at all because it had been played so many times. Yes, yes, obviously there must have been a sense of ritual.
Presenter
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 4
Uh
Speaker 2
Uh
Presenter
You were commissioned to write a full length opera for Covent Garden in the early seventies. It was called Therese, based on the life of uh the French Roman Catholic saint. That didn't come easily, did it? It went on for years and years. You got a kind of block
John Tavener
Yes, I certainly had a very big creative block. I think it may have been connected with this thing that was going on inside, this this moving away from the Western Church, basically. I mean the Roman Church and in a way, by writing Therese, I wrote myself out of the Western Church.
Presenter
But it took you, I mean, about six years to get it finally finished, and so you were thirty by then, and and you had a a stroke at that point.
John Tavener
I had a stroke when I was thirty, yes, yes.
Presenter
Was that brought on in part perhaps by this enormous effort and this intellectual and spiritual conflict?
John Tavener
It could well have been, because my music changed very distinctly after I'd had this stroke.
Presenter
But physically you recovered.
John Tavener
Physically I recovered. When I'm tired I I my voice goes almost totally, and when I'm tired my left side is is very weak.
Presenter
But spiritually you turn to the Orthodox Church.
John Tavener
Yes, but where I felt totally at home.
Presenter
Why? I mean, what did it offer that you
Presenter
almost seem, as you speak to, to have craved.
Presenter
I think
John Tavener
I think it was my contact with tradition, the whole idea of tradition with a capital T. I don't mean sort of changing guards at Buckingham Palace, I mean the real tradition, icon painting, was a strict spiritual discipline in a kind of way. And when I was received into the church, Metropolitan Antony is the head of the Russian church here. He asked me to make a setting of the liturgy, but he didn't want me to know anything about the sacred tone systems of the Byzantine Church. He just wanted me to react to the words. And of course that set the cat among the thieves because everybody I was meeting Indians and Sufis and orthodox people that said, you know, it's just your own music. I mean it it's not it's not coming through you. It's it's it's just you trying to express these words. And that silenced me for a while. And I went on a long trip round Greece and I I just went and listened. I didn't make an academic study of all all these tones, but I just went from monastery to monastery and and listened to different things. Rather like I think Bartock collected folk music. I went around collecting all this chant material and trying to make sense of it. And so in in in the end tradition could work through me because it it became so natural.
Presenter
You absorbed it.
John Tavener
Absorbed it, yeah.
Presenter
And it came out right in the end, and you ceased to offend them, did you? You've got the tones right there.
John Tavener
Yeah.
Presenter
Record number four.
John Tavener
I'd like to have the moment on in Holy Week when when the cross is brought out in the Greek Church, Today He who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the cross.
John Tavener
Uh
Speaker 4
Three
John Tavener
Mm.
Speaker 4
Or nean
Speaker 4
Sien Melong Cremant and Pixie Long.
Speaker 4
Or nean
Speaker 4
Tenjin Ka
Presenter
Part of the Good Friday service in the Greek Orthodox Church recorded in the Patriarchate in Constantinople.
Presenter
It's been through your religion, John Tavernagh, that you've met a woman who's become your friend, your mentor, and indeed your librettist. Can you tell me about her?
John Tavener
Well, yes, she's a very remarkable woman, although she'd hate to be called that. I read some things that she'd written, and I was so impressed by the w the the way her mind worked, uh the way she saw things, the wonderful paradoxes she saw in Christianity, not only in Christianity, but in life in general. And it was a very long time before I actually met her, because I spoke to her maybe when my mother was dying, I I probably spoke to her six or seven times a day, and and ever since that time, which is nineteen eighty four, I probably speak to her I would say I must speak on average twenty two times a week.
Presenter
Her name is Mother Thekla. She's seventy-five years old. And she is an abbess.
John Tavener
Yeah.
John Tavener
She's abbess in a rather bleak and w wonderful place in on the moors of Yorkshire overlooking Whitby.
Presenter
And and why do you need to talk to her so often?
John Tavener
I think because I need someone to tell me am I if I'm trying in music, which is what I think I I am trying to do, to to create a kind of li liquid metaphysics, um I need to be sure that the philosophical or theological idea
John Tavener
and the music actually go hand in hand.
Presenter
But you don't just talk to her about music.
John Tavener
No, I I she knows everything about me. I mean I talk about my private life, ev ev everything. But what w as a composer, uh having someone like her is is is is wonderful because, as she says, I take no pride whatsoever in my work insofar as she's a nun and therefore uh mustn't take much pride in it. And therefore it's very convenient for me and and she wouldn't mind me saying this because she she speaks in a very sharp tongue anyway. So I can just ring her up and say no and she says, All right, I'll I'll do it again. But I when when I when we collaborated on a piece, Mary of Egypt, um I when she'd rewritten it six times, uh it came back with a very fierce note, This is the final draft, you will not see any more.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Presenter
But I read also somewhere that that where she said that she didn't particularly even enjoy doing it. It was just something she felt she should do, that it again was God's work.
John Tavener
Okay.
John Tavener
She does say that. Um whether it's absolutely true I don't know.
Presenter
She she's obviously very much a a a mother figure to you. Did she perhaps replace, as it were, your Emma? You you say you met her as your own mother was dying. Yeah.
John Tavener
Yes, I I don't think she replaced my mother. I don't think anybody could replace my mother, but I have no objection to saying that that that she is a kind of mother figure to me, but she's also a kind of intellectual figure. I think I've always needed uh intellectuals, and she is an intellectual, to to check,'cause I'm not an intellectual myself, to check my ideas philosophically. Very often they've been rather sharp tongued women, and mother techler's uh certainly the best I've ever had.
Presenter
Record number five.
John Tavener
Well, record number five is part of Tchaikovsky's Cast Noisette. There are many reasons why this personal reasons. One was it was the last piece of music my mother heard when she was dying, and she sat up in bed and um and she said, How wonderful
John Tavener
Then there was a rather strange story when I was with Mia Farrow in Manchester. Mia has been a friend of mine all my life. And she suddenly decided she wanted to hear me play the organ at about two o'clock in the morning. And being a Catholic, she w we went round all the Catholic churches in Manchester, and I think we drove halfway to Liverpool, and then came back to an extremely seedy Indian restaurant where the prostitutes were all coming in from their night's work. And suddenly I heard coming over that a loudspeaker, Castnazette, but most of all perhaps because I love every note that Tchaikovsky wrote.
Presenter
Part of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite played by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrei Previn.
Presenter
Three years ago, I think it was, John, that you were working at fever pitch, and your heart started to thump, and you were suddenly taken very ill.
Presenter
Um, what happened?
John Tavener
I was in Greece, um, on an island on my own, and um it started thumping and although I'd been working, as you say, at fever pitch, and I should have been happy, I felt desperately unhappy, and I didn't quite know why, this because I hadn't f I'd had, you know, when I was younger, sort of bouts of being incredibly depressed. But I felt incredibly unhappy, and I came back to England and I told my brother about it, because he he he'd had this syndrome, Marfans, which our family is rather afflicted with. And then I went to see somebody the day after I came back from Greece, and they said, Yes, the the valve is the aortic valve is leaking and um, you know, I needed urgent surgery.
Presenter
And what is what is this marfan?
John Tavener
Marfan is the weakness of the connective tissues, basically. Um it can attack the back. Most common place to attack is the the main valve to the heart.
Presenter
Then it's har and horizontal.
John Tavener
And it it's hereditary. And I think one has a a much a lesser lifespan. My father's eighty one and and and very well with it, uh but he he probably carries the gene and it's been passed on, in fact, to my one of my brother's children, he has two, uh suffers from it and the other one doesn't. Abraham Lincoln had it. I think Rachmaninoff had it incipiently, although it didn't reveal itself. Anyway, I it was a very touch-and-go operation and um it was fifty-fifty whether I would live or die and I had been writing the apocalypse on my hospital bed waiting actually for for a a valve to come in. Um I was still writing it just in case I I hadn't lived. Um I thought perhaps somebody might be interested enough to sort of try and work out my pencil, very faint pen pencil s sketches.
Presenter
And and was it once again a an illness that changed your attitude to life?
John Tavener
Yes, I've been very protective of myself, thinking up marriage, children, no, no, no, no children will get in the way of my inverted comms, precious art. And I took a completely different attitude after this, partly, I think, because my wife to be was by my side all the time I was in hospital. And I thought, you know, if this person really wants to marry somebody who's likely to drop dead maybe in a couple of days, I mean, what a kind of love this is. And I do live much more now at all risks. I have a daughter, for instance. At the age of fifty, to have a ten-month-year-old daughter is a completely new experience. Yes, it it did change.
John Tavener
Well, I think she will do. I mean yes, I I by noise and by not being very respectful of the manuscript paper, I I think it will become, you know, quite difficult. But on the other hand, uh it's it's it's a great joy.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
And u until now music has been the most important thing in your life.
John Tavener
It still is. It still is. Without any question. I mean, if I I would have to say that I would sacrifice everything for the sake of music.
Presenter
It doesn't worry you to say that.
John Tavener
It might worry me to say it. It's just I must be honest if you ask me. I uh that I would sacrifice everything.
Presenter
Record number six.
John Tavener
As I said, my godmother took me to the magic flute when I was twelve. Everything about that opera is wonderful. I'm not a great lover of opera in general, but here is a piece of Western music that uses symbolism. It the the idea of the the wise or holy man in Serastro, but but most wonderful of all, those two fools. And I think you have to be a fool to really love someone. And uh I would like to hear their their their duet when they just pronounce each other's names.
Speaker 4
But
Speaker 4
Buck Buff.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Speaker 4
Uh
Speaker 4
Hop hop hop
Speaker 4
Bop pop bop pop bop.
Speaker 4
Ha ha ha.
John Tavener
Uh
John Tavener
My Geniver Spider, my Geniver Spider!
John Tavener
Yeah.
Presenter
Walter Berry and Emmy Lerzer singing the love duet Papagena from Mozart's Magic Flute with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Carl Berm.
Presenter
You do, of course, John Tavernagh, like all artists, have to contend with your critics, and yours can be cruelly dismissive. They have said, for example, that your work is, and I quote, simple music for simple desires. They say another one said, you make some nice noises and have a good line in ecstasy, but offer nothing to the musically literate. How do you answer them?
John Tavener
But there's a wonderful story of the early desert fathers. There's a monk, young monk, who complains to his abba. He says, I can't bear all this abuse that's hurled at me. I can't bear all the praise either. So the abba said, well, you go into the cemetery and abuse the dead and praise them and see what happens. And so he did this, and the abba said, well, what did happen? He said, well, nothing. He said, then that's how you should be. That's how I try to be. Intellectually, I try to be like that, but I am very offended when people say nasty things about me. And I'm not all that comfortable when they praise me either.
Presenter
But do you think you perhaps embarrass them? I mean, do you think that people are embarrassed by the overtly religious?
John Tavener
Yes, but then I think if you talk to a French music crit critic, a certain kind of French music critic, they they they understand tradition much more than the than the average you know, you talk to a critic, maybe he works on on one of our best newspapers and you talk about Plato, they don't know what you're talking about. So, in a sort of way uh they're not as literate uh this is me being very, very pompous here, but th th they haven't learned that mind has to go into the heart. It can't all be in the mind and it can't just all come from the heart. And this is not only an orthodox idea, it's the idea of all Eastern art. And I think they're not very acquainted with the source material um from which I work, and tradition, for instance, frowns very heavily on on complexity, unless there is a good metaphysi physical reason for it being complex.
Presenter
So they misunderstand the fact that that that your music is so uncomplex. It's stripped down, isn't it? It's terribly simple.
John Tavener
I I want to make it simpler and simpler and simpler.
Presenter
Record number seven.
John Tavener
One of the greatest experiences of my life was when I heard and met the Dagar brothers. The they're a group of Indian singers who sing perhaps some of the most sacred music that I've ever heard.
Speaker 4
Uh
Speaker 4
Oh
Speaker 4
BAAA BAAAAAAAAAA
Speaker 4
Take it.
Presenter
The Daggar Brothers and Ragar Lalit. You live in Sussex, John lot of peace and quiet, except for the occasional crying of the baby, as you say.
Presenter
How much do you worry about time running out, about you running out of time?
Presenter
About death.
John Tavener
Yes. Um
John Tavener
I don't think I worry about it, because I think that that that that death will come when it comes and there's uh there's nothing I can do about it. There is a reason for me to suspect that I won't live to see my daughter grow up and all the rest of it. And that kind of thing worries me, I mean, upsets me a little. Um also I feel that th th I still have music that I want to write. As far as death is concerned, uh I mean, people always go on about my faith and I I mean, I don't know, do I have so much faith? I I believe that there's a divine order and that there there's a divine realities, which most people perhaps uh w will not admit that there is, but as far as life after death, I have no idea what what form that will take. But I've given a lot of thought to death, I suppose, because I've come quite near to it myself a number of times in my life, and a lot of the early pieces I wrote almost every piece I write is in in a sense kind of uh viewing death in different lights.
Presenter
Last piece of music.
John Tavener
The last piece of music is the blessed duet from Mary of Egypt. And Mary of Egypt was a prostitute saint of the second century. What I love about this story is that the seeming holy man, Zosima, and the seeming sinner, Mary of Egypt, meet in the desert at at the ends of their lives, and Zosima's life is completely transformed by Mary. And that's what I love about the Gospels, because they're full, full, full of parables. What we think is good is so often turned upside down.
Speaker 4
Uh
Presenter
Patricia Rosario and Stephen Varco singing the Blessed Duet from Mary of Egypt with the Alborough Festival Ensemble conducted by Lionel Friend, and Mary of Egypt, of course, composed by my castaway John Tavener, and the libretto for that piece was written by Mother Thecla.
John Tavener
Yes, it was.
Presenter
Well, John, if you could only take one of those eight records.
John Tavener
I think it would have to be the first one, The Akathist of Thanksgiving, not because I think it's the best piece of music or anything like that, but because it's closest to me metaphysically, um and I would need as uh as much metaphysical support as possible living on this island, I think.
Presenter
What about your book?
John Tavener
I would take the apothegmata, which is the early writings of the Egyptian fathers, first and second century, because of their incredible terseness, their incredible simplicity, and at the same time the enormous toughness and a a a depth of compassion that I think we can't even imagine nowadays.
Speaker 2
Very nice.
Presenter
And what about a luxury?
John Tavener
My luxury uh I hope I'm allowed to have what I would like that's an upright piano, stuffed with manuscript, bottles of Greek red wine, and um as much Greek fresh garlic as possible.
Presenter
Well, well, don't tell me what it's stuffed with. We'll just say you have a piano. What you put in it is your business.
John Tavener
Well
Presenter
John Tavernag, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.
John Tavener
Thank you.
Presenter
Uh
Speaker 2
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.
Presenter asks
You set out to be a concert pianist. What happened?
One day I remember very vividly I was learning one of the late Beethoven sonatas and and I can see it with hindsight that maybe it was a symbolic gesture. I just flung it across the m the room and said I I made one of the few decisions I have made in my life, uh that I wanted to put all my eggs into one basket and be a composer. Um it was a terrific risk.
Presenter asks
How did you come to know the Beatles?
I think I kn I I knew independently Yoko Ono. That was how I I met John Lennon. In fact, I think I was wi invited I don't think I was invited to an American's house in Hereford Square and and he said that John Lennon and Yoko Ono were going to be there. And um we we we sat on the floor most of the evening. He prepared a huge dinner, but they brought their own macrobiotic food. So we sat on the floor and played each other's tapes. John Lennon seemed to like what he heard of my music and he rang me from his car the next day and and said they would like to sort of sign me up. Then I um it it took Ringo actually, who was much more pragmatic than John Lennon. Ringo actually brought out the whale and the Celtic Requiem.
Presenter asks
You were commissioned to write a full length opera for Covent Garden called Therese. That didn't come easily, did you? You got a kind of block.
Yes, I certainly had a very big creative block. I think it may have been connected with this thing that was going on inside, this this moving away from the Western Church, basically. I mean the Roman Church and in a way, by writing Therese, I wrote myself out of the Western Church.
Presenter asks
Your critics have said your work is simple music for simple desires, that you make some nice noises but offer nothing to the musically literate. How do you answer them?
But there's a wonderful story of the early desert fathers. There's a monk, young monk, who complains to his abba. He says, I can't bear all this abuse that's hurled at me. I can't bear all the praise either. So the abba said, well, you go into the cemetery and abuse the dead and praise them and see what happens. And so he did this, and the abba said, well, what did happen? He said, well, nothing. He said, then that's how you should be. That's how I try to be. Intellectually, I try to be like that, but I am very offended when people say nasty things about me. And I'm not all that comfortable when they praise me either.
“I think there are an awful lot of artists around who who are very good at uh leading us into hell. … I think one of Thomas Beecham's best remarks was um you know, I don't want to be left in hell, I'd rather someone could show me the way to paradise.”
“I don't sit down and and sort of think, Oh, I I must show people the way the paradise after all, I don't know what paradise is, and I haven't a clue whether I'll ever go there. I I just feel I I do feel a kind of vocation to write, and I feel that when I'm writing it's the only time when I'm happy, is when I'm writing music.”
“I don't think I know very much about prayer. I mean, the only kind of prayers I said would I tend to say, have mercy on me, I'm a worm.”
“I've been very protective of myself, thinking up marriage, children, no, no, no, no children will get in the way of my inverted comms, precious art. And I took a completely different attitude after this, partly, I think, because my wife to be was by my side all the time I was in hospital. And I thought, you know, if this person really wants to marry somebody who's likely to drop dead maybe in a couple of days, I mean, what a kind of love this is.”
“But there's a wonderful story of the early desert fathers. There's a monk, young monk, who complains to his abba. He says, I can't bear all this abuse that's hurled at me. I can't bear all the praise either. So the abba said, well, you go into the cemetery and abuse the dead and praise them and see what happens. And so he did this, and the abba said, well, what did happen? He said, well, nothing. He said, then that's how you should be. That's how I try to be.”