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John Tavener's The Protecting Veil had its premiere at the 成人论坛 Proms on 5 September 1989. Steven Isserlis was the cello soloist, and waves of sound - like light squeezed out of a distant past - drifted between serenity and fervour in this 45-minute meditation.

The press called it "radiant". Commercial recordings flew off the shelves. Yet 250 miles away, in an Orthodox monastery on the North Yorkshire moors, a 71-year-old nun shunned the limelight. Mother Thekla wasn鈥檛 listed in the programme, although her role in the creation of The Protecting Veil was immense.

Mother Thekla was no ordinary nun. A Russian-born, RAF-trained Cambridge graduate, in 1975 she co-founded the Monastery of the Assumption where she lived a secluded life with Mother Maria, Sister Katherine and a cat called Nimrod.

Tavener met her in 1981 when he sought permission to use her book, The Life of Mary of Egypt, for an opera. An extraordinary relationship between the two developed. Mother Thekla had a piano installed at the monastery and became Tavener鈥檚 muse, counsellor, librettist and spiritual mother. She provided texts for his vocal works of the 1980s and was the driving force behind The Protecting Veil.

"I want to find something that is, for me, as close as possible to the voice of God," said Tavener. And that鈥檚 what Mother Thekla helped him find. "He sets thoughts," she explained "and I put them into words". Her diary recalled the phone calls with Tavener - often four, five times a day - and the intense stretches of work, which frequently extending far into the night. "Only a monk or nun could cope," she wrote.

Mother Thekla annotated Tavener's scores in green, red and yellow ink to reveal connections, symbolic footholds and patterns. Sometimes she would suggest musical ideas: a high pitch, a distinctive soun... She gave Tavener the theological justification and spiritual reassurance that he needed, bar by bar and note by note.

Mother Thekla took no payment for her work and did not wish to be credited for her contributions. She simply felt that it was her role. Tavener said that the cello in The Protecting Veil represents "the Mother of God, who never stops singing". Could it also in some way be the voice of Mother Thekla - a remarkable woman who never stopped guiding and giving?

This is one of 100 significant musical moments explored by 成人论坛 Radio 3鈥檚 Essential Classics as part of Our Classical Century, a 成人论坛 season celebrating a momentous 100 years in music from 1918 to 2018. Visit bbc.co.uk/ourclassicalcentury to watch and listen to all programmes in the season.

This is an excerpt from a recording of The Incarnation from The Protecting Veil, performed by the London Symphoyn Orchestra with solist Steven Isserlis and conductor Gennadi Rozhdestvensky.

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