Agraphon is a mystical work for soprano soloist and Baroque instrumental ensemble. Tavener's typical vocabulary of long-held notes and chords, improvisatory vocal lines, and recourse to unconventional scales and intervals results in a work that seems ancient, modern, and timeless all at once.

Approximately 20 minutes in length, Agraphon is a setting of an extract from a modern Greek poem by Angelos Sikelianos, in English translation by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. The imagery of the poem presents stark contrasts between the reality of life on earth and the transcendent image of the Eternal, and the Justice of Eternity.

Sikelianos wrote the poem in the autumn of 1941, when Greece was under occupation of Fascist armies of Italy and Germany. In it, Jesus and his disciples regard the stinking, bloated carcass of a dog on a town garbage dump. Jesus relates the stink to that of the injustice in the town they have just left, yet finds in the dog's still-unblemished white teeth a symbol of purity. In such a way, he says in drawing his lesson, one can find purity beyond the world's decay. In Greek terminology this poem is an "Agraphon," literally meaning "unwritten thing," and signifying a saying, tradition, or tale about Christ that is not recorded in the Gospels or linked to an ancient source.

The harmonic structure of the piece reflects the duality of the poem. The basic intervals follow a series that seems able to regenerate itself forever, while harmonies possessing "the apparent evil of the ending series of spiraling sixths and sevenths" fall to the work's low point "into a hellish realm." (The quoted words are those of the composer.) The vocal line takes the soprano into narrow micro-intervals of great expressive power, while the instrumental background hovers nearly motionless.

Tavener wrote Agraphon on commission from the Athens Concert Hall, Megaron Mousikis. Its premiere took place there on October 29, 1995, with soloist Patricia Rozario and The Camerata, Alexander Myrat conducting.

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