Song for Athene, sometimes known by its first line of text, ‘Alleluia. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest’, was completed by Tavener on 11 April 1993. Commissioned by the BBC, the work was composed as a tribute to a family friend, Athene Hariades, who was killed in a cycling accident. Hariades, who taught English and drama at the Hellenic College of London, impressed Tavener with her love of acting, music and poetry after he had heard her read Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey. After her tragic death, the composer was moved to write something which combined elements of the Orthodox funeral service with lines from Hamlet. The resulting piece was first published in 1997. The form of the work consists of six monophonic intonations (‘Alleluia’), which shift modally from major to minor, using Orthodox texts which function as introductions to words specially contributed by Mother Thekla, an Orthodox nun who lived at the Orthodox Monastery of the Assumption near Whitby. Tavener always considered her his ‘spiritual mother’. The final section of Thekla’s text juxtaposes the solemnity of ‘Weeping at the grave creates the song’, from the Russian kontakion, with the joyous promise of the Resurrection (‘Come, enjoy rewards and crowns I have prepared for you’), before all recedes to the final, seventh intonation. Throughout the entire ‘song’, in true Byzantine fashion, the monophony and choral responses are sustained by a continuous drone (or ‘ison’), anchoring the tonality to F major. Song for Athene has now probably become Tavener’s best-known choral work after it was sung at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, on 6 September 1997 in Westminster Abbey under Martin Neary, as her cortège left the Abbey.

from notes by Jeremy Dibble © 2023