Sir John Kenneth Tavener was an English composer, known for his extensive output of choral religious works.
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25 Facts About John Tavener
2.
John Tavener first came to prominence with his cantata The Whale, premiered in 1968.
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3.
John Tavener was knighted in 2000 for his services to music and won an Ivor Novello Award.
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4.
John Tavener was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by Sarum College in 2001.
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6.
John Tavener's parents ran a family building firm and his father was an organist at St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Frognal, Hampstead.
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7.
At the age of 12, John Tavener was taken to Glyndebourne to hear Mozart's The Magic Flute, a work he loved for the rest of his life.
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8.
The school choir was often employed by the BBC in works requiring boys' voices, so John Tavener gained choral experience singing in Mahler's Third Symphony and Orff's Carmina Burana.
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9.
John Tavener started to compose at Highgate, and became a sufficiently proficient pianist to perform the second and third movements of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto and, in 1961 with the National Youth Orchestra, Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No 2.
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10.
John Tavener became organist and choirmaster in 1961 at St John's Presbyterian Church, Kensington, a post he held for 14 years.
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11.
John Tavener entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1962, where his tutors included Sir Lennox Berkeley.
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12.
John Tavener first came to prominence in 1968 with his dramatic cantata The Whale, based on the Old Testament story of Jonah.
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13.
John Tavener had been deeply affected by his brief 1974 marriage to the Greek dancer Victoria Maragopoulou.
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14.
John Tavener was particularly drawn to its mysticism, studying and setting to music the writings of Church Fathers and completing a setting of the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, the principal eucharistic liturgy of the Orthodox Church: this was Tavener's first directly Orthodox-inspired music.
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15.
John Tavener's Fall and Resurrection, first performed in 2000, used instruments such as ram's horn, Ney flute and kaval.
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16.
Also in 2003 John Tavener composed the exceptionally large work The Veil of the Temple, based on texts from a number of religions.
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18.
John Tavener reiterated both his desire to explore the musical traditions of other religions, and his adherence to the Orthodox Christian faith, on Start the Week, recorded only days before his death and broadcast on 11 November 2013.
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19.
John Tavener suffered from considerable health problems throughout his life.
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20.
John Tavener had a stroke in his thirties, heart surgery and the removal of a tumour in his forties, and suffered two successive heart attacks which left him very frail.
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21.
John Tavener had an interest in classic cars, owning an Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire, a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, a Jaguar XJ6 and a Bentley Mulsanne Turbo.
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22.
John Tavener died, aged 69, on 12 November 2013 at his home in Child Okeford, Dorset.
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23.
John Tavener's funeral was held at Winchester Cathedral in Winchester on 28 November 2013.
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24.
John Tavener wasn't writing to be popular – he was writing the music he had to write.
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25.
John Tavener recognised Arvo Part as "a kindred spirit" and shared with him a common religious tradition and a fondness for textural transparency.
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