Heart's Ease
Spirituality in the Music of John Tavener
©2020
Edited Collection
XXIV,
306 Pages
Series:
Music and Spirituality, Volume 11
Summary
Our age owes Sir John Tavener deep gratitude. His works cross both cultural and disciplinary boundaries. He illustrated how to deal with intense suffering and felt deeply for the suffering of the world. He stands as an icon representing a view of artistic expression as a way of generating hope and transcendence.
In Tavener’s thinking, spirituality was closely tied to wellbeing and healing and this book considers the spiritual encounters that brought him ‘heart’s ease’ and the communication of that experience to performers and listeners through his composition. The contributors to this book include scholars, musicians, theologians, medical practitioners, informed listeners and practitioners in religious traditions. It includes case study material, empirical studies, philosophical, theological and theoretical contributions along with accounts from lived experience of the spirituality generated by Tavener’s music. This is set in the context of a world that sees spirituality sometimes coupled and sometimes uncoupled from religion.
The pattern of the book is an alternation between interludes and chapters illuminating different facets of the crystal of Tavener’s creative work and the spirituality and ‘heart’s ease’ it can offer.
In Tavener’s thinking, spirituality was closely tied to wellbeing and healing and this book considers the spiritual encounters that brought him ‘heart’s ease’ and the communication of that experience to performers and listeners through his composition. The contributors to this book include scholars, musicians, theologians, medical practitioners, informed listeners and practitioners in religious traditions. It includes case study material, empirical studies, philosophical, theological and theoretical contributions along with accounts from lived experience of the spirituality generated by Tavener’s music. This is set in the context of a world that sees spirituality sometimes coupled and sometimes uncoupled from religion.
The pattern of the book is an alternation between interludes and chapters illuminating different facets of the crystal of Tavener’s creative work and the spirituality and ‘heart’s ease’ it can offer.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Welcome from Lady Maryanna Tavener
- Introduction (June Boyce-Tillman)
- Prelude: ‘To Be a Pilgrim’ – the Spiritual Journey of John Tavener through his Music (June Boyce-Tillman)
- 1 John Tavener’s Musical Theology of Religions (Stephen B. Roberts)
- 2 In Search of Truth: John Tavener’s Transition from Western Culture to Eastern Tradition (Andrzej Kęsiak)
- Interlude One: The Mystery of Faith – an Interview with John Tavener (June Boyce-Tillman)
- 3 Tavener and Taverner: Choral Perspectives on the Holy Trinity (Anne-Marie Forbes)
- 4 ‘Dumped Modernism’? The Interplay of Musical Construction and Spiritual Affect in John Tavener and his To a Child Dancing in the Wind (Brian Inglis)
- Interlude Two: An Instrumentalist Embraces the Choral Tradition (Neil Valentine)
- 5 Critical Encounters with John Tavener’s Requiem : ‘Our glory lies where we cease to exist’ (Bart Seaton-Said)
- Interlude Three: John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil – a Performer’s Reflections (Matthew Barley)
- 6 Spiritual Echoes of Love: John Tavener’s Three Hymns of George Herbert (Anne-Marie Forbes)
- Interlude Four: Mozart – a Celebration of an Unconscious Mystic (Sir John Tavener)
- 7 John Tavener and the Search for an English Orthodox Musical Language (Alexander Lingas)
- Interlude Five: Encomium for Sir John Tavener (June Boyce-Tillman)
- 8 John Tavener and Sacred Silence (Eduard Heyning)
- Interlude Six: John Tavener and the Holy Spirit (Jill Bunce)
- 9 Spirituality in Music as a Source of Wellbeing: Group Experiences and Client Statements on the Basis of the Music Therapy Method ‘Guided Imagery and Music’ with Music by John Tavener (Anna E. Röcker)
- Postlude: Brief Reflections on Winchester Cathedral and the Music of Sir John Tavener (James Atwell)
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
- Affirmations
- Series index
←viii | ix→
Figures
Figure P.1. The Spiritual Experience in Music.
←ix | x→Figure 3.2. Tavener, Prayer to the Holy Trinity layered structure
Figure 3.5. Taverner, Missa Gloria tibi trinitas Credo.
Figure 3.6. Taverner, Missa Gloria tibi trinitas Gloria opening.
Figure 3.7. Taverner, Missa Gloria tibi trinitas Credo ‘et ascendit’.
Figure 4.4. Conversion of Byzantine Palindrome letter square to pitch-classes
←x | xi→Figure 4.6. Summary Analysis of To a Child Dancing in the Wind
←xi | xii→ ←xii | xiii→Figure 6.1. Spatial arrangement of performers for Tavener’s Three Hymns of George Herbert.
Figure 6.2. Tonal organisation of Tavener’s ‘Heaven’
←xiii | xiv→ ←xiv | xv→Figure 7.3a. Phos hilaron (Sakellarides 1908: 15)
Figure 7.4a. Prokeimenon for Saturday vespers (Sakellarides 1908: 17).
←xv | xvi→Figure 7.5a. Trisagion of the Great Doxology Mode Plagal 4 (Sakellarides 1908: 331).
Details
- Pages
- XXIV, 306
- Year
- 2020
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781788747493
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781788747509
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9781788747516
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781788747486
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2020 (November)
- Keywords
- John Tavener Music Spirituality June Boyce-Tillman Anne-Marie Forbes Heart’s Ease
- Published
- Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, New York, Wien, 2020. XXIV, 306 pp., 13 fig. col., 60 fig. b/w.
