A Liturgy of Division: Sacred Music

Anonymous 4 and the Chilingirian String Quartet, Concert at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing, New York, March 10, 2001.

John Tavener, the British composer,has been creating a compelling hybrid of various sacred music tradtions and his own cri de coeur individuality for decades. His early career as an electronic composer who came to prominence in the 1960s coincided with the development of late twentieth-century minimalist composition, although he does not identify with its cerebral tenets or implicit philosophy. ¹ Tavener's embrace of the Eastern Orthodox faith as of 1977 brought him in contact with Byzantine modalities. He began to incorporate these and other Eastern influences in his music using Western notation. The powerful appeal of his synthesis perhaps underlies his quiet celebrity and helps explain why Tavener's music is perceived as both secular and sacred, beyond known categories. The deep spirituality that motivates him as a composer conveys a profound emotional charge, if not some form of magnetism listeners can feel--whether this impression has to do with shared spiritual feeling or involuntary neurological response to his compositional techniques.

His recent work The Bridegroom (1999) is an octet for four vocalists and string quartet. Commissioned by no less than seven European and American organizations including Metropolitan Museum Concerts, it was first performed on October 17, 2000, at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. The New York premiere took place on March 10, 2001, at a concert held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Temple of Dendur. Even though there was no special billing for the premiere beyond a note on the program, it seems likely that the four selections preceding The Bridegroom, as well as the concert's timing during Lenten season and even its novel venue in the Temple of Dendur, were thoughtfully designed to complement this new work. The Bridegroom was written for world famous vocalists Anonymous 4 and the equally illustrious Chilingirian String Quartet. They presented it in the context of other works from their repertoire including Gregorian chant; string quartets by Arvo Pärt and Franz Joseph Haydn; and Benjamin Britten's Missa Brevis. The diversity of these works was an intriguing frame for the finale. Perfect fifth intervals, thought to be a symbol of eternity in early liturgical music, became a kind of transformative theme as their austere beauty recurred in later works both secular and nonsecular. The music preceding the premiere of The Bridegroom thus highlighted the spiritual source of the music yet ventured to include works from Tavener's native Western tradition, and the eminence of his reputation was modestly folded into the program as a whole. Still, the museum setting for a Saturday night concert crowded with paying customers attested to his cultured reputation and appeal as an innovative composer.

Like other compositions by Tavener, The Bridegroom takes direct inspiration from the Eastern Orthodox Church. The words sung, in English, were based on the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins (see Matthew 25: 1-13, Revised Standard Version of the Bible, where the parable can be found in a passage relating Jesus's Sermon on the Mount soon before his crucifixion and resurrection). Supplemental program notes by the composer added this information:

These texts are sung in the first three days of Holy Week in the Orthodox Church. The Bridegroom who comes is God. He constantly requires Love put to the ultimate test. There is no room for pride, callousness--we must repent, i.e., have a metanoia (an inner change of mind) weeping holy tears as we stand outside the Heavenly bridal chamber.

Looking at the score, ² the music appears to be in the key of B-minor. It may, however, have been written in one of the premodern "church mode" scales that modern listeners wouldn't recognize. It sounds minor, but like a "natural" minor scale where the 7th tone is left natural rather than raised an extra half...