"Song of the Angel" by J. Tavener: Between Traditions of Angel Voice and Sacred Minimalism

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to identify the content and genre-stylistic specificity of J. Tavener’s ‘Song of the Angel’ in the context of spiritual-ethical, poetic-intonational guidelines of angeloglossia and sacred minimalism. The methodology of the work is based on a combination of the principles of art history, hermeneutics, genre-intonation and historical-culturological research methods. The scientific novelty of the article is determined by the fact that it first introduces materials on the composition ‘Song of the Angel’ by J. Tavener into Ukrainian musicological circulation, which summarise the composer’s religious experience and the spiritual and aesthetic searches of his era. Conclusions. The poetic and intonational features of the composition ‘Song of the Angel’ by J. Tavener, created at the end of the 20th century for the anniversary of the United Nations, reveal the features of the spiritual and creative evolution of its author, directed in the mature period of his activity to the active search for the sacred foundations of existence, associated primarily with the spiritual teachings of Orthodoxy, as well as with the search for the ‘eternal religion’ that unites the East and the West. The genre and style specificity of the analysed work by J. Tavener, accordingly, reveals the indicative intersection of the ancient traditions of Christian liturgical singing, generalised in the phenomenon of ‘angelic singing’ in its Byzantine ‘sounding’, and the signs of sacred minimalism as an indicative phenomenon of musical postmodernity. The specificity of the first is also manifested in the programmatic definition of the work; and in the performing composition, in which the vocal-instrumental chamberness allusively borders on the choral timbre; and in the calophonic figurativeness of the thematism of the solo parts (soprano, violin) with the demonstrative microtonal (Byzantine) chromaticism; and with the corresponding minimisation of dynamics and the dominance of slow tempos, which together form the image of being in a state of laudatory ‘statics-ecstasy’. The connection of J. Tavener’s composition with sacred minimalism is manifested in the composer’s appeal to extremely simple, tonally oriented means of expression and in the dominant role of the principle of repetition-repetition, which manifests itself at various levels – from the motivic-melodic to the structural-compositional (AAA1).