Best quotes by John Tavener on Music

Checkout quotes by John Tavener on Music

• ‟ When I talk of primordial innocence, I hear it in Sufi music with the nay flute. I see it in Coptic icons, in most traditional art, particularly art of the American Indian. I find the texts extraordinarily beautiful and very childlike and very simple. I've been particularly interested in American Indian texts.

  - John Tavener
  

• ‟ The music is something outside myself that's also inside myself... Music and a sense of another presence always went hand in hand. Even when I was three, I would improvise music, and my maternal grandfather would act as an audience and used to applaud. I would imitate things like thunder and rain.

  - John Tavener
  

• ‟ 'The Whale' was in the category of so-called serious music, and yet it brings together a wide series of musical styles. It was influenced by people such as The Beatles, the spirit of the times, and I think 'The Whale' certainly had a pop element to it.

  - John Tavener
  

• ‟ I've written a very long piece of music recently, the 'Veil of the Temple,' which lasts about seven hours. It's really a kind of vigil. It takes place during the night, waiting for the resurrection of Christ.

  - John Tavener
  

• ‟ Hildegard von Bingen conveys spiritual ecstasy, if we're talking of Western music. What bothers me about Western music is that it doesn't have an esoteric dimension in the way the music of the East has, whether it be Byzantine chant, the music of the Sufis, or Hindu music.

  - John Tavener
  

• ‟ My way towards God has been to write music.

  - John Tavener
  

• ‟ I used to think there was something dirty about being paid for something which is a sacred thing to do. I can't disconnect the act of writing music from the act of prayer. If anyone tries to stop me working, it feels like someone is trying to stop me from taking communion.

  - John Tavener
  

• ‟ I've got great joy from rediscovering Western music. I love Schumann and Chopin, and those amazing symphonies of Bruckner.

  - John Tavener
  

• ‟ I don't hate pop music. I liked the Beatles, but then, I knew them.

  - John Tavener