M usi c
Challenge of the sacred
Peter Phillips
0 ne of the corners of musical history which is never presented in its true colours is the period around Monteverdi's so- called 'revolution'. Wits, raconteurs, bores and opera-buffs alike lovingly dwell on the first manifestations of stage music, which soon turned into opera at the beginning of the 17th century, and the dreaded Mon- teverdi always features large in the discus- sion. What they fail to point out, presum- ably because they fail to notice it, is that the early opera composers unexpectedly but completely put an end to the idea that musicians should in the first place devote their gifts to sacred music. Up to that time it had been a standard assumption that a composer of any worth would write for the church before he did anything else, and that singers would use their talent to Perform this repertoire. Right up to the end of the Renaissance this way of musical life continued as if nothing could threaten it, confident in its past and in its continuing usefulness.
Suddenly opera and the very material attractions of its performance beguiled the entire musical world. When composers wrote sacred music after that it was in an operatic idiom, with star solo parts and important orchestral or organ/orchestral accompaniment; and when singers sang this music and, worse, the music of earlier epochs, they did it in an operatic way (they often still do). The result, predictably, was the collapse of good choirs in all those countries where opera took firm root, most obviously Italy and France. In Italy, where the choral tradition was second to none before Monteverdi's antics (and at its best in Monteverdi's own Venice), it had vanished within a matter of decades after the beginning of the operatic baroque. In England, conversely, where opera didn't catch on in a native form until it was too late to do any damage, the choral tradition survived and flourishes to this day. By comparison St Mark's basilica in Venice at the moment has no choir at all, and very little music of any kind.
This secularisation of church music was never reversed, indeed it was irreversible. Once fame and fortune were in the ring, the modesty and even anonymity of mediaeval and Renaissance music was not surprisingly found to be inadequate. However, there have since been intriguing side-glances towards that musical state of mind which last was commonplace in the Renaissance. Bruckner's church music, and even his symphonies in a certain sense, convey a spiritual element which suggests that he saw the instruments of the orches- tra in a quite different light from his contemporaries. Even more remarkable is the music of one of England's leading composers of the present time — John Tavener. Here is a man who has written little other than sacred music, most of it for unaccompanied voices, and yet who has held the attention of a public who are famously inclined to be embarrassed when choirs start to sing and sacred words require their concentration. He has even taken sacred stories and his own sacred musical idiom into the opera house, with Therese performed at Covent Garden in 1979. Critical reception of it was very `Don't call me at my office.' mixed, but there can be no doubt that it was a brave moment, an unconscious challenge to the 'revolution' for which Monteverdi is known. And he intends to do the same thing again: with a libretto based on the story of Mary of Egypt, the whore who became a hermit in the desert. It will be a most unusual evening's enter- tainment.
The success of Tavener's music is not founded in the prejudices of any traditional cliques in society. He does not, for inst- ance, normally write for the Anglican church, but instead for the Orthodox chur- ches, often setting texts in some of the obscurer European languages (current and dead), whose concepts are very difficult to translate. The initial impact of his writing depends entirely on the beauty of the sounds he conceives, and an indefinable conviction within the music which I know from experience communicates itself strongly to a wide public. Even my French friends have detained me at length with questions about the Ikon of Light, of which I made the first recording.
The existence of such a composer now- days is hard to explain, especially when he goes around saying such unfashionable things as that he does not wish to do anything new, but rather to continue the `primordial' tradition of the Orthodox church. Nonetheless the Cheltenham Fest- ival this year will witness the first perform- ance of Eis Thanaton (To Death); the Almeida Festival will feature him and several of his more recent compositions on 11 June when he will speak on the 'Chal- lenge of the sacred in the 20th century', and his entire Vigil Service has just been recorded by the choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. The first performance of his Evening Canticles Coll. Reg. will be given in King's Chapel in April. He has just finished a three-hour long work, entit- led Akathist (Glory to God for Everything) which should eventually come to be seen as a leading 20th-century contribution to the English oratorio tradition. The rules of fashion do not seem to apply to Tavener, nor do they interest him. Perhaps he is setting up his own fashion; but I must point out that one does not have to be a religious freak to enjoy this music, even though a curiosity about death probably helps in the long run.
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