John Tavener

Sanguine Fan

In post-Christian Ireland there may be little sympathy for John Tavener's view that, 'Our culture is in ruins because music has come out of the church or temple into the concert-hall, and ikons have come into the museum'.

His approach was to turn the concert hall into a church where listeners could experience that sense of transcendent reality previously discernible through liturgy.

I hope his death will result in more exposure of his work in Ireland, but maybe it will take another generation to work out our distaste for religion before we can embrace such openly spiritual music.

I hope I'm wrong though.

Gamayun

I'm not familiar with Tavener's work but from my own personal experience the rejection of religion (and spirituality) has never been a barrier to enjoying the great works of religious music or art.

The beauty of Allegri's Miserere or Bach's Mass in B minor can be appreciated, sans faith, in the same way Michaelangelo's Pietá or El Greco's The Agony in the Garden may be.

I do balk at religious music in English though, the dogma and subjugation inherent in the libretto of some pieces can be infuriating. Listening to the same libretto in an unfamiliar tongue transforms it to an abstraction, leaving the piece to be enjoyed from a purely aesthetical standpoint.

You mention "transcendent reality previously discernible through liturgy", to me this is emotional manipulation via indoctrination. Non-religious people will experience the piece in a different way but that doesn't objectively devalue the experience does it? People can interpret art as and how they please, regardless of the intention of the composer.

Sanguine Fan

Gamayun wrote: »

The beauty of Allegri's Miserere or Bach's Mass in B minor can be appreciated, sans faith, in the same way Michaelangelo's Pietá or El Greco's The Agony in the Garden may be.

I daresay all great art, whether religiously-inspired or not, can be appreciated aesthetically or emotionally by someone without faith.

What Tavener was getting at, I think, was that generally speaking modern art is devoid of any sense of a transcendent reality beyond. For those who reject any such reality this may be fine. But for those who hunger for 'spiritual nourishment', the absence of such an vital element, taken for granted in previous times, is profoundly depressing.

Tavener himself cited the painter Francis Bacon as an 'extreme example' of this modern tendency to 'mirror' the human condition, rather than offer insights into something greater.

Of course, we still revere great art from the past, such as Bach's B minor Mass and Michaelangelo's Pietá, but as museum pieces, not as living channels of divine inspiration.

I realise this is meaningless for anyone who does not believe, but for those who do, Tavener's music is a wonderful antidote to what passes for modern culture.