JOHN TAVENER

Total Eclipse is one of the richest, most intensely expressive of Tavener's ritualistic, metaphysical tableaux. The work is a contemplation of Metánoia, a "change of mind" or "conversion", and depicta St Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus. St Paul is symbolically represented by a soprano saxophone and a countertenor.

The term Agraphon is a saying or tradition about Christ not recorded in the Gospels and untraceable to its original source. Tavener's music contains two symbolic ideas: the opening series of intervals representing the music of the spheres, and the series of sixths and sevenths spiralling downwards into a hellish realm. The music ends with the clash and union between the Divine and the human.

Recorded in the Temple Church, London
25-28 June 2000
Playing time : 62'05"   DDD

JOHN TAVENER (b. 1944)

1     Total Eclipse (40'30")

John Harle saxophone
Christopher Robson countertenor
James Gilchrist tenor
Max Jones treble

2     Agraphon (21'36")

Patricia Rozario soprano

WORLD PREMIER RECORDING

Reviews

" [In these two works] the confrontation of new ideas - or perhaps new-and-old ideas - with pre-Classical ways of playing forms a fascinating conjunction. In Total Eclipse, set in potent relation to John Harle's fierce saxophone (he represents Saul: the 'eclipse' is his blindness; the 'metánoia', as chanted by the choir, his conversion) the performers evoke new aspects of Tavener's music, taking further the discoveries of Eternity's Sunrise, his earlier collaboration with the ensemble, to recreate one of the composer's most terse and original scores of recent years."

BBC Music Magazine

"This is music that aspires to convey a sudden flash of insight that resonates through eternity."

The Guardian

"Tavener has made something fresh, new and timeless from apparently basic elements."

The Independent