Peter Phillips: I saw the other side of John Taverner

When I first met John Tavener in 1977, he was still largely known for his dramatic cantata The Whale, which had been performed at the Proms in 1969. By then both John and his Whale had acquired considerable glitter, partly by having the veteran newscaster Alvar Lidell associated with it, and partly through its eventual connection with the Beatles, who had issued it on their Apple label in 1970. He never wrote anything quite like it again, though one notices that even this early and iconoclastic piece is based on the bible.

I always wondered what his now famous religious sense really consisted of. I never fully bought the unsmiling preacher, which became his public persona in later life, since in private he was never like that. I originally met him because he had wanted to know more about the 16th-century composer and possible forebear of his, John Taverner, hoping in some degree to recreate Taverner’s style on his own terms.