Concert
The Veil of the Temple
newsday.com Stacey Kors
18th Julyc, 2004
Stephen Layton/Choir of the Temple Church

the middle of last year's world premiere of his sprawling "The Veil of the Temple" at London's Temple Church, composer Sir John Tavener got up from his seat and started walking around.

"Everybody was sitting rather reverently in their pews to begin with," Tavener said recently in a phone interview from London. "And I thought, 'This is absurd.' So I started walking, and soon other people did as well."

Tavener hopes New Yorkers will do the same next Saturday when the work has its North American premiere at the Lincoln Center Festival. "I hope people will feel that they can pop out and pop back in again, and that they can move around," he said. "I don't expect people to be sitting there, listening to a concert that lasts seven hours."

That's right: seven hours. Structured like an overnight Easter vigil, "The Veil of the Temple" starts at 10:30 p.m. and runs until 5:30 the next morning. It took Tavener an entire year to compose this monumental work, which features 120 singers and instrumentalists. To help create a more comfortable (and spiritual) atmosphere, Lincoln Center is replacing the orchestra seats in Avery Fisher Hall with floor cushions.

"It's obviously very unusual to commission a composer to write something so long," said Stephen Layton, music director of the Temple Church, who will conduct "The Veil" in New York. He requested the opus for his 800-year-old church, which houses the tombs of crusading Knights Templar and figures prominently in the bestselling novel "The DaVinci Code."

A minimalist composer

It's not unusual, however, for all sorts of groups to try to commission Tavener, Layton said. "He's one of our foremost, what you might call holy, spiritual, minimalist-type composers. And I thought, 'If we are going to commission him, we should try to do something that's different.'"

It certainly is different, and yet it's not that much of a stretch for the 60-year-old Tavener. One of England's most prominent living composers, he first gained recognition for his avant-garde, dramatic cantata "The Whale" in 1968, which was recorded on the Beatles' Apple label. In 1977, Tavener converted to the Russian Orthodox faith, and his music changed dramatically. "For me, writing or composing is like prayer. I can't separate the two," Tavener said.

In its minimalism and slow, contemplative beauty, Tavener's work is often compared to that of other contemporary mystical composers, including Estonia's Arvo Paert and Poland's Henryk Gorecki. Unlike those composers, whose music has a decidedly European flavor, Tavener draws much of his ideology and inspiration from the ancient traditions of India and the Middle East.

"I feel closer to the ethos of the East," he said. "I'm unhappy with all this angst and argument that has happened in Western music. I want music to have the status that it does in Eastern music. It needs to return somehow to its roots."

An Eastern blend
Although "The Veil of the Temple" is predominantly Christian in content, it includes a number of Hindu and Muslim texts, including poems by the 13th century Sufi poet Rumi. The score calls for Eastern instruments such as Tibetan horns and temple bowls.

"As the piece moves to the end, he really brings things together," Layton said. "He leaves the whole piece with a mixture of a Hindu and a Christian chant, which all the singers sing as they leave the building. I found that rather striking when we left the church at 5 o'clock in the morning to meet the day, singing these hymns of two different faiths."

"The Veil of the Temple" falls into eight cycles, each an extension of the last - a structure that allows listeners to leave and return without exactly missing something. "It doesn't mean that it all sounds the same," Layton said, "but it does mean that if you miss something in Cycle Five, you'll hear it again in Cycle Six, but it'll be even grander."

The cycles, in a sense, reflect different times of the night, according to Tavener. "You could also say that it was a kind of rising in ecstasy."
That crescendo of feeling was mirrored in the movements of the audience at the work's premiere, which was videotaped. "At the very, very highest points of the piece, in the early hours of the morning," Layton said, "everybody was on their feet and didn't want to sit down."

Ecumenical music
Both Layton and Tavener are quick to point out that "The Veil of the Temple" can be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of his or her beliefs. "We're all changed in different ways by it," Layton said, "from the most simple - 'My God, I'm feeling tired' - to something that was really rather provocative. You want people to think, 'What was it that made me decide to go in the first place? And what's happened to me as a result?'"

Tavener hopes that his music can serve a more practical purpose as well. "Originally, music was connected to healing in tribal situations, and I think it's high time we return to that," he said.

"All religions at the moment are fighting one another, and I don't think that can be solved simply by presidents sitting down and talking to other presidents. I think it has to be done at a deeper level, perhaps through the esoteric language of music itself. So perhaps, it can bring about some kind of healing - some understanding."

Copyright (c) 2004, Newsday, Inc.
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