Seeking the Voice

John Tavener died last week. The Economist , which has the best obit page in journalism, described Tavener’s prodigious talent, then got to the heart of the composer:

“Some would call this consummate talent, even genius. He saw it entirely differently. His music was a gift from God, already composed since before the beginning of time, which he would merely discover rather than write. It was sacred revelation, a contact with realms beyond reality, which brought him transcendent joy. Among 20th-century composers (for none of whom, save Stravinsky and Messaien, he had a good word to say) he occupied a place apart: preferably not a clinical, ‘humanist’ concert hall, but a cathedral, or, even better, a curved and cruciform Greek chapel dark but for candlelight. His musical ambition was to find ‘the Voice’: both his own musical voice, and the sound of God.”