The Lamb - John Tavener

• It was written in 1982
• It is a sacred song
• Written for a four-part choir
• Set to an 18th century poem by William Blake
• It was first sung at a carol serice in Winchester Cathedral on 22 December 1982
• It is sometimes sung as an anthem at the end of the Anglican service of Evensong
• "It was composed from seven notes in an afternoon" - Tavner

JOHN TAVNER - THE LAMB - 1982

• The overall form is strophic 
• Bars 1-10 form a setting of the first verse of the poem
• Bars 11-20 are the settung if the second verse
• Although Tanner uses a fuller texture in the second verse, the music is essentially the same
• The melody of bars 1-2 returns in bars 7-10
• This gives the idea of ternary form
• A=bars 1-2
• B=bars 3-6
• A1=bars 7-10
• It is credible to say that this then repeats
• Although there is examples of ternary form, the piece is in strophic form officially

JOHN TAVNER - THE LAMB - 1982

• There is no time signature
• Although some bars have a distinctly 4/4 feel, others are much freer
• The rhythm is always guided by the words and not by a regular pulse
• Barlines are used to mark the end of a line in the poem
• The word setting mimicks spoken word
• Syllabic word setting
• Ocassional mellisma to draw attention to the word
• The simplicity of the rhythm reflects the innocence of the text
• The text is more important than the rhythms 

JOHN TAVNER - THE LAMB - 1982

• Opening bar is monophonic 
• The addition of the altos in bar 2 creates a two part homophony 
• It is also homorhythmic
• Bar 7-10 is four bar homophony and it stays this way for the rest of the piece
• There is homophony and homorhythms throughout the piece 

JOHN TAVNER - THE LAMB - 1982

• The opening bar uses just four notes from the scale of G major
• This connotes child like innocence 
• The addition of the altos in bar 2 is n example of bitonality as the altos sign in Eb and sopranos sing in G major
• Bar 3 is sopranos singing 7 notes, wide use of accidentals
• Bar 4 is a retrograde version of Bar 3
• Bars 5-6 is bars 3-4 but with the altos singing a mirror inversion
• Bars 7-10 is  the opening melody but harmonised for four parts 
• Bars 11-16 are a rescoring of the first verse but in octaves
• Soprano's range is very limited (an augmented 5th)
• The melody's dynamic ranges from pp to mp

JOHN TAVNER - THE LAMB - 1982

• Four pitches in bar 1 define the key of G 
• Bar 2 is bitonal (G and Eb)
• All bars start and end on a G (in the melody)
• The use of a G at the end of a bar reconciles the dissonance in the bar e.g bar 3 and 4
• Bars 7-10 is in the aeolian mode
• The aeolian mode (E-F#-G-A-B-C-D-E) 
• This gives the feel of Em but you can tell its modal because there are no D sharps
• Tavner has deliberately exploited the ambiguity created by an idea through major keys, bitonality and modality
• Bars 7-10 - Use of Am9 chord
• This chord has a 7th and 9th in and Tavner described it as his joy-sorrow chord
• This highlights the era the piece was composed 
• The mixture of old and new musical style highlights the post-modernist style of this piece 
• 7-10 and 17-20 suggest the influence of minimalism

JOHN TAVNER - THE LAMB - 1982