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The Music of Silence: A Composer's Testament has been assembled and edited by Brian Keeble from extensive interviews with Tavener at his Greek-island home. The second half of the book, which is largely in interview format, should be quite valuable for those who are moved by his music or just want to understand what the composer is up to. Tavener's explanations of his concept of his music as "ikons in sound," the crucial differences he sees between the Christianity of the Orthodox East and the Latin West, and his goals in writing particular works such as Mary of Egypt and Fall and Resurrection are enlightening and often fascinating.
But the first half of the book is insufferable. "In Retrospect" purports to review Tavener's life and compositional career more or less chronologically. Not only are both the prose and the material disjointed, rambling, and repetitive (for which Keeble shares blame) but overbearing self-regard and spiritual pretentiousness seem to ooze from every page like "liquid metaphysics" (a term Tavener uses to describe his music). It is, frankly, off-putting and stupefying. This reader alternated between bemused annoyance and an intense desire to see the composer parodied by a comic actor (as when he writes, "I had a vision in the bath one day").
One can't help wishing the composer would emulate his spiritual adviser and sometime librettist, the down-to-earth, no-nonsense Mother Thekla. He quotes her instructing him on how to approach Akathist of Thanksgiving: "Just get on with it, dear." May John Tavener take that advice well and truly to heart. --Matthew Westphal
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