BRITISH composer John Tavener (1944-2013) had “a profound sense of silence.” In his book Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music (read an excerpt here), Robert B. Reilly, who made this comment, says Tavener was one of three influential composers who have laid the atonality of modern music to rest. “The tyranny is now gone and tonality is back,” Reilly writes.

The words to Tavener’s choral composition, Mother and Child:

Mother and Child

Enamoured of its gaze
The mother’s gaze in turn
Contrived a single beam of light
Along which love may move.
Hail Maria!
Hail Sophia!
Hail Maria!
Through seeing, through touch, through hearing the newborn heart
Conduits of being join.
Hail Maria!
Hail Sophia!
Hail Maria!
So is the image of heaven within
Started into life.
Hail Maria!
Hail Sophia!
Hail Maria!
As in the first adoration
Another consciousness has come to praise
The single theophanic light
That threads all entrants here
Hail Maria!
Hail Sophia!
Hail Maria!
This paradise where all is formed of love
As flame to flame is lit
Hail Maria!
Hail Sophia!
Hail Maria!
ATMA, ATMA, ATMA, ATMA, ATMA
Hail Maria!
Hail Sophia!
Hail Maria!

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