The Palintropos Project.

As a student, back in 1979 I had many conversations with John about Palintropos. It’s impact on me at the first performance was considerable, and the work fascinated me within the context of his other works of this period. Was it secular or sacred? As Tavener said “Palintropos is the only piece of mine that ever came near to being a Debussyan tone poem.” The answer of course, as with practically all of Tavener’s music, is that it is sacred.

What essentially interested Tavener when choosing the title was the idea of something ‘turning back on itself’. One could interpret this as the progress of the changing colours over the sea during a single day as he sat on on the island of Patmos, but as Tavener told me, it was one of the first works that emerged from his conversion to the Orthodox religion in 1977 and he often mentioned the Orthodox belief that man and nature are essentially divine on account of the incarnation.

Seen from that perspective Palintropos can viewed as something whole, separated from its origin and returning once again to its original state. This implies oscillation which is reflected in the overall musical structure of the work. At that time Tavener became very interested in the writings of Carl Jung and in his discussions with me spoke about Jung’s ideas on enantiodromia. Carl Jung defines enantiodromia as:

“the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time. This characteristic phenomenon practically always occurs when an extreme, one-sided tendency dominates conscious life; in time an equally powerful counterposition is built up which first inhibits the conscious performance and subsequently breaks through the conscious control.”

The same thing can be found in nature where any extreme is ultimately opposed by a system of order in order to restore balance.

In Palintropos this can be evidenced by the violently contrasting sections (columns of sound) that alternate between the ‘reflective and the dynamic’. In the principles of traditional Chinese religion – as in Taoism and yin-yang – the central idea of the I Ching is that yang becomes yin when they have reached their extreme, and vice versa”.

This concept is implied also in Heraclitus’s writings. Heraclitus says

“cold things warm, warm things cool, wet things dry and parched things get wet.”

The dynamic motion back and forth between the two – especially by opposition and conflict.

From my conversations with Tavener it was clear that the metaphysical aspects of Palintropos run deep throughout its construction and its concept. There are several layers of the concept behind the work, ranging from the simple idea of the dramatic changing colours throughout the day that Tavener experienced sitting atop the island of Patmos, through to the idea of the duality of man as nature and the divine.

However, when I asked Tavener about the choice of title he admitted that the idea of the title came from Heraclitus’ notion of Logos as a divine law (or God) which governs the universe and the flow of change in reality or ‘man as nature’. Logos can be interpreted as ‘word’ or indeed ‘story’. Most importantly it’s about duality. Heraclitus said “everthing changes or is in the process of changing” and this, coupled with the process of ‘turning back’ is constant in Palintropos.

Diogenes Laërtius summarizing Heraclitus’s philosophy, as; “All things come into being by conflict of opposites, and the sum of things (τὰ ὅλα ta hola (“the whole”)) flows like a stream. Like Anaximander, Heraclitus also believed in a unity of opposites and all existing entities by pairs of contrary properties.”There is a harmony in the bending back (παλίντροπος palintropos) as in the case of the bow and the lyre”. Heraclitus also remarked “the bow’s name is life, though its work is death.

The “strife of opposites” is a harmony and therefore that the summation of wisdom is not a comprehension of many things, but the perception of the underlying unity of opposites in conflict.

When Heraclitus said “I searched myself” it could be said that rather than an attempt to understand his inner self it was perhaps a starting point in the epistemological process of understanding the cosmic reality.