Tavener - 'The Lamb'

Biography

• John Tavener was born in 1944
• best known for choral music - rooted in the liturgy of the orthodox church

'The Lamb'

• composed in 1982
• sets a poem from Songs of Innocence by William Blake (1757-1872)
• can be termed an anthem -  a work with English text for the choir to sing in a church service
• the poem is addressed to a lamb, with a play on words in verse 2 - the lamb of God who 'became a little church' is Jesus Christ
• the song is often performed at Christmas (note the phrase 'became a little child'), having been widely heard in the broadcast Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge in 1982
• one of Tavener's best known works

Performing forces and their handling

• 'The Lamb' is
  • for four-part choir (sopranos, altos, tenors and basses in the sccore, although the highest part can be sung by trebles)
  • unaccompanied
• the ranges of the upper parts are narrow:
  • soprano: Eb - B (just an augmented 5th, fairly low in the range) and only a perfect 4th at the beginning and end of each verse
  • alto: D - B (major 6th); often sounds below the soprano, but the overall range is virtually the same
  • tenor: Eb - D (major 7th)
• the bass moves mostly within the major 9th A - B; low Es at the end of each verse provide special depth and weight
• some passages aren't easy to sing - there are 'difficult' melodic and harmonic intervals with unusual tonality

Texture

• verse 1:
  • monophony - soprano in bar 1
  • two part - soprano and alto in bar 2; this section is homorhythmic and the melodic interest is shared between the parts
  • monophony - soprano in bars 3 and 4
  • two part - soprano and alto in bars 5 and 6
  • four part - soprano, alto, tenor and bass in bars 7 to 10; in this section the texture is homophonic with the soprano holding the main melodic interest and the other parts providing harmonic support
• verse 2
  • octaves - soprano and alto in one octave, tenor and bass an octave below in bar 11 (contrasts with monophony in bar 1)
  • the two parts are doubled at the octave - soprano and tenor have one part, alto and bass have the other in bar 12 (contrasts with the 'ordinary' two part writing)
  • octaves - bars 13 and 14 (contrasting with monophony)
  • two parts doubled at the octave - bars 15 and 16 (contrasting with 'ordinary' two part writing)
  • four parts - bars 17 and 20

Structure

• William Blake's poem has two stanzas
• Tavener uses the same musical material for both, despite textural changes, meaning his piece is overall strophic
• musical structure differs slightly from the poetic structure
  • poetic strucure: five couplets (pairs of lines) in each stanza:
    • couplet 1 has two similar six-syllable lines
    • 5 has the same line twice
    • 2, 3 and 4 are rhyming couplets with seven-syllable lines
  • the structure of each stanza might be labelled:
    • …