Sir John Tavener - Composer HARDtalk

here is another chance to see Sarah Montague's HARDtalk interview

with one of Britain's most celebrated composers,

Sir John Tavener, filmed just months before his death in 2013.

Welcome

Welcome to

HARDtalk.

I'm Sarah Montague.

Sir John Tavener composes music for God,

even referring to it as a form of divine dictation.

In doing so, he has become one of Britain's most

celebrated living composers.

40 years ago, his work was sometimes dismissed as bland,

populist and new age.

Since then, he has defied the critic

The Protecting Veil was one of the biggest selling

classical CDs ever.

Many years ago, he had a heart attack which nearly killed him.

Since then, everything has changed - his music, his outlook on life

and his faith.

What happened and how did he change?

Sir John Tavener, welcome to HARDtal

Thank you.

What happened to your music after you nearly died?

It nearly vanished altogether.

Because I was taken ill in Switzerland.

They didn't not know whether I was conscious,

whether I was brain dead or not.

My wife came over from England.

She played me Mozart and I started conducting, like that.

The doctors realised my brain was not dead.

I did not become conscious after that.

But they realised I reacted to Mozart's music.

And then when I did become conscious, it seemed that

I was so weak.

I was in such a poor condition.

It seemed that music had vanished fr

I reacted to it if you played it but I didn't have any music

in my head.

It was extraordinary because all of my life I had music

in the head.

It seemed to vanish.

And so did my so-called belief in Go

Well, it did not vanish but it did not seem there anymore.

Both the music and the belief in another dimension have

always gone together.

So, I had no music, no God, nothing.

But I was contented in a sort of way

To be just looked after by nurses.

That's what it was like for two years.

There was nothing sudden or dramatic that happened.

Gradually, I started to hear music again,

feeling a kind of spiritual interest.

Because the interest had all gone.

Then I started to read books.

One of the most extraordinary things that happened to me was that

during this period, I listened to a lot of late Beethoven.

He never meant a great deal to me.

After being ill, his music was just

Both as a composer, it made my jaw drop.

He had amazing technique and extraordinary talent.

Also, it was a transcendent what of dealing with his suffering.

How did it change your music?

Did you find that you are writing different music as a result?

Yes.

The music was much more condensed and terse.

I had written long pieces that lasted many hours.

My interest in doing that, I had not the strength...

I mean, it was both a physical and spiritual

thing.

I didn't have the strength, so the music became much more

concentrated.

I suppose more transparent.

My attitude to religion was quite different.

I had this very inspired kind of faith.

But sometimes, my personal life wasn't as good as the faith might

have implied.

Since I have been ill, I have been much more caring for my

children and wife.

In a way, I've come to understand that suffering

is part of existence.

I don't want to be pious but I think God allows suffering of the most

appalling to exist as part of the journey.

You have had many illnesses in your life.

You have Marfan syndrome, genetically acquired.

It affects the connective tissue.

But you talk about being grateful for some of the pain you had

in your life.

I think it keeps a certain humility and keeps one in touch

with a childlike...

..I'd almost go as far as to say with a feminine...

Because one has a...

It's hard to explain.

How do I say?

If you don't have this humility, you are likely to lose out

on a childlike or feminine dimension.

So much of modern art is masculine or aggressive and has no sense

of the feminine or childlike.

This certain sort of weakness, it is not exactly a weakness.

It's a humility inside the notes.

One does not see it in a lot of contemporary art.

Right from Eliot Gardiner to someone like John Adams.

Everything is very masculine and aggressive and very well done.

It is like driving a Ferrari, a well-tuned Ferrari.

I mean, that is a danger of contemporary art.

It's still my slight problem with contemporary

music, contemporary art.

I feel that the sort of dimensions of Chopin

and Schumann...

Their music is full of the feminine

Full of this wonderful outpouring, which you do get

in contemporary art.

For some reason, you can get it in painting or poetry.

It is interesting what you mean by the feminine.

You immediately talk about the childlike.

Rhapsodic dimension.

And masculine is what?

It is hard-edged, intellectual, aggressive.

For you, the pain, you talked about suffering

as being a kind of ecstasy.

Yes.

What did you mean by that?

It's the other side of feeling ecstatic.

The pain...

It's what the pain actually does.

It produces a kind of ecstatic music

of ecstasy from the music that is influenced by making love

with my wife.

That's a completely different type o or any feeling of

God's presence, which is a different kind of ecstasy.

I've come to realise that it's a part of God's plan,

that one suffers.

It's up to one, somehow, to transcend it and to produce

a kind of ecstasy through the suffering.

I don't think to write about the suffering per se

on its own without the dimension of God is particularly valuable.

One of the first pieces you wrote after your most recent bout

of illness was from Tolstoy's work.

You described it as almost autobiogr a man who

is dying and reviews his life.

You said in the end, there's no death

but only light.

That happens on the last page of the novel.

It's a harrowing description of excruciating pain -

screaming that went on for three days, complete alienation

from his wife, from his son.

Suddenly, on the last page, it is only the last

page, this moment comes when he asks for forgiveness of his wife,

and his little boy is holding his hand.

He asks for forgiveness.

His little boy is holding his hand.

He asks for forgiveness.

At that moment, the pain seems to disappear.

There is no death.

There is only light.

Let's talk about the importance of God.

You described the way you write music as almost

like divine dictation.

Yes, that's a bit pompous of me.

It is clear when you talk about it t from

using it.

An expression of William Blake's.

But it is, in a sense, you channelling God.

It seems to me that is what is happening.

When I wrote the 99 names of Allah according to the Koran,

I meditated.

It's more accurate to say I walked around the garden,

repeating the Arab word.

The names.

It seemed, on a daily basis, that a melody

started to form in my mind to the Arabic words.

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Everything today tends to be one-dimensional.

People criticise Muslims, Catholics too easily.

Journalists too easily make jabs at Catholics.

They don't deal with the massive depth of Catholicism

or the depth of Islam.

I think it's...

Maybe there are programmes that want to disprove Mohammed.

It is not just the historical dimensions of religion

but they are speaking on a different level.

Their one-dimensional thinking is only historical and mystical.

This is what is surprising about you.

You talk unapologetically about your belief in God

and what you are trying to do.

Which almost seems surprising in these times, when we have

militant atheism, religion being at its extremes, fundamentalism.

It's reached a kind of senility, old age and decrepitude.

These things are likely to happen.

What has?

All religions?

All religions, have reached old age.

There are aspect of senility and decrepitude...

What happens to them?

Do they die?

No, I think, well, I'm speaking above my depth at the moment.

But the Hindus say that we are at the end of a period,

where they forecast a kind of disillusionment of religion.

Then there will be a mighty resurgence.

I don't know what will happen.

That is what the Hindu doctrine is.

This is one that you believe?

Well, when I say I believe, I would put it to

music.

Perhaps it is the power of the position you find yourself

in, where you are talking about God.

I wonder whether it makes you more or less popular.

The critics hate it.

They love it when I say that religion is in a state

of decrepitude.

Because they think I have given up on religion.

But you haven't?

Not at all.

You said you were Presbyterian but you were attracted

by Catholicism and you converted to Orthodox in 1977.

Yes.

Since then, you had sort of fused it with...

Am I right in thinking you have fused it with Hinduism and Buddhism?

Well I believe all religions are equally

true.

Otherwise they are equally false.

It must be that.

That is another perspective.

But - Plato's argument is that in the beginning,

God and Heaven

and Earth joined and there was only one primal being.

God.

Therefore, in logic, all religions must be equally true.

You are no longer Orthodox?

You have to be something, I think, in this life.

Because it's a fallen world.

You cannot be a Hindu and a Muslim and

Christian.

All at once.

Then it becomes a new age kerfuffle.

You have to be something.

Up to a point, you have to acknowled the

discipline of that particular religion.

Although you say that you are member of the orthodox church,

you are adapting in taking things from other religions,

people listen to you and say it is only new age nonsense.

I do not think it is.

What you say to them?

I say I am an orthodox, I have to live by the disciplines

of the orthodox religion.

We have an orthodox chapel right here, I used to be quite fanatical

about it but I...

That seems to have passed.

I converted it into a chapel.

But I have been rethinking my relationship with one of the most

powerful influences in my life.

I have not spoken about this before, I knew a Protestant and Presbyterian

minister who was tortured by his faith.

He used to break down at sermons, he was a very unique character.

He told me that life is a creeping tragedy.

Only at the end of my life do I understand what he meant by it.

That life is tragic, that there is another

dimension to it.

You have the critics occasionally railing against you.

The recent concert they did not seem to do that so much.

They thought there was a substance and transparency, I think so too.

You didn't used to say that you cared, ...

But yes, I care.

For those people who buy your CDs, that one was one of the biggest

selling classical CDs ever, and also after the death of princess

Diana where your piece for her was used as the coffin

was being taken out and that prompted a remarkable response.

I wrote that piece for a family friend, a girl who had been knocked

off a bicycle and died.

It was extraordinary for her parents to see the life of that piece

because I only wrote it as a private tribute to a friend.

Somehow gained that national recognition.

You said you are trying to channel God and people seem receptive

to that, yet it is a remarkably secular age.

Yes.

Are they responding to the God in your work

or are they responding to you?

I do not know.

I don't.

I honestly believe that it is impossible to fall out

of the transcendent, that no matter how much noise

atheists make they do not think they fall out of the transcendent.

If we are made in the image of God is impossible.

Explain what you mean.

You mean that atheists are made in the image of God too?

Yes, no matter how hard they try and rail against him I do not think

they fall completely out of God.

I mean, I have never found an atheist, and my daughters says

atheists are so boring, but I've never found an atheist

who convinces me.

I know when I read sometimes any of the great mystical poets,

I do not know why, I just know that it is right.

I listen to atheists but no matter how intelligent and brilliant

they are, no atheist writer convinces me.

They do not inspire me.

There must be something wrong.

You have described at least for some of your work that it has come

to you fully formed?

Yes, very often when a person dies they seem to leave a gift

of a piece of music.

It has happened countless times, when a Catholic monk died

and as I drove home from the funeral these notes came into my head

and that became the requiem for him.

Is that fully formed?

No, no, that is an artistic...

I get the initial idea and then I go home and work it out,

not fully formed.

That is not quite true.

One I had fully formed, my mother was driving me home

from Cornwall and I just knew where the piece existed.

That is the only time that it has come out fully formed.

Some have said that your music is simple music for simple minds.

Listen to the recent music, it is not so simple.

But I love simplicity.

You cannot say that Beethoven was a simplistic composer,

but you can say that Mozart...

Everything he wrote was simple but there are bits that come

in from time to time, but you can say he is a simple composer.

He is like a being that was dropped out of paradise.

Is all good music, does it all come from God?

I think it must do.

For you, it seems the ritual is important.

Forgive me to use the phrase, but you use the ideas,

use the universality of religion, you use it because of its rituals...

Because of its rituals and its beauty.

Because of its rituals and its beauty.

The problem with Western rituals is they have thrown out

so many things.

They have thrown out the beauty.

Throwing out the Latin language, the Catholic Church seems to have

lost a great deal.

They are bringing it back to some extent,

but it is just that ritual.

I am sure the Orthodox Church is just as corrupt as the Catholic

Church but they do not pronounce on world issues,

they keep quiet on world issues.

I am sure they are just as corrupt.

Not pronouncing on moral issues is a good thing?

People should be free to...

It embarrasses me when the Catholic Church announces on moral issues.

I do not think they are able to deal with it, I think the present Pope

is a very good idea, he is very special.

In terms of what the ritual means for you, and your music,

you talk about being inspired by devotional music,

part of it is not music, it is creating a space

for contemplation.

But do you think that is true of all music?

I think you are right, it is creating space

for contemplation.

It is the one thing I have contributed to music.

I have written large ritual pieces written to be performed in large

spaces usually churches, large spaces.

There are certain pieces that last all night.

In a way I have tried to reinvent what has been taken away

from the churches, in a sense.

For many, the way you became a public figure way back in 1968,

because you listen to that piece now and how it is so different

to where you are now, what do you think of it?

I love it.

It is a piece you ought to write when you are 20,

is full of ideas, imaginative, surrealist, I was interested

in surrealism, all of those ideas were interested to be engaged

with when you are young.

It starts with a description of a whale and then...

Incorporates so many different things.

You said it was written by an angry young man and some of the things

you were railing against them have not changed.

You mean the po-faced nature of modern art?

The po-faced nature of modern Art.

The fundamentalist...

It was an area you could not criticise.

They were writing this stuff that was very

dangerously near mathematics.

It must contain mathematics but it must contain inspiration

and divine inspiration.

Are you still angry about the same things?

And you are still writing as much as you always have been?

Some days I am flat out.

There is a considerable amount.

It is stuff of which you are proud?

Yes, yes.

So John Tavener, thank you for coming on HARDtalk.