Taverner: Synopsis and Documentation

Extract

My opera Taverner projects onto the life and mind of the sixteenth century English composer John Taverner certain perennial preoccupations of my own, notably with the nature of betrayal at the deepest levels. The ‘action’ is within Taverner's mind; and so, despite constant references to sixteenth century sources (mostly English), neither time nor place are treated realistically. While time becomes non-sequential and functions in a formal and quasi-musical sense as a means of presenting event and anti- or shadow-event, place is as particular or as general as the text demands, and needs no definition by conventional ‘scenery’.