The Scottish composer James MacMillan has an enviable track record.
His brand of music appeals to vast audiences. He believes in the common triad as
fervently as he believes in God — he is a devout but liberal Catholic
— and his language seems sometimes almost recklessly eclectic.
andante
contributor Stephen Pettitt, not known as the most sympathetic
of London's critics toward MacMillan's work, met the composer during the
recording session for his new choral work O bone Jesu, written for The
Sixteen to celebrate that ensemble's 20th anniversary. The work receives its
world premiere on 10 October 2002 in Southwark Cathedral, London; performances
follow in Lincoln, Ely and Durham Cathedrals and York Minster. Meanwhile, a
major piece for the London Symphony Orchestra and a joint commission for a new
symphony from the NHK Symphony in Tokyo and the BBC Philharmonic are also
fresh from MacMillan's busy desk.
Stephen Pettitt: We've just taken a break from the session for your new
piece, O bone Jesu, and I must say that I was impressed first of all by
the immense confidence of your writing.
James MacMillan: Well, I've written a lot for choir. And actually this is the second piece I've written for The Sixteen. There was the piece for the Proms that they did last year with the BBC Philharmonic, The Birds of Rhiannon [released by Chandos in autumn 2002].
SP: Listening with a score in my hand to that complete performance of O bone Jesu that Harry [Christophers, director of The Sixteen] just did, I was struck by just how much it seems to have in common with [early 16th-century Scottish composer] Robert Carver's famous 19-part motet on the same text — and that motet was, in fact, the spur for your setting. There was the way you play with contrasting tessituras, exploring the full pitch range of the choir, for instance, and all that late-medieval fantasy-like decoration. And most of all, the recurring supplicatory interjections of the word "Jesu."
JMacM: That's probably
subconscious. The Carver is one of the great iconic pieces for any Scottish
composer, to be honest. Listening to the 19-part motet is a bittersweet
experience for me. There's of course a delight in its complexities and in the
sheer beauty of it. But there's also a bit of sadness that such a gloriously
rich culture came to such an abrupt and violent end because of the political and
religious upheavals of the 16th century. I feel a sense of loss — this
was music that could have gone in so many different and fertile directions. So
I've always had this desire to revisit the text. And when Harry asked me to
write something for their 20th anniversary, it seemed like the obvious thing to
do.
SP: So no quotations [from the Carver], no direct emulations?
JMacM: There are no quotations, but there is this shared fascination for the words "O bone Jesu." The words come back twenty times in the text. My way of dealing with that is to take a little falling figure of F-sharp—E and harmonize it a little differently each time. The intervening text is stitched together just as you say, by trying to draw on many different textures, from solo voices and sparse two-part textures to multi-voiced homophonic sounds — and in that way trying to get as many angles on the choir as possible.
SP: In general, do you think that those technical devices you employ bind you closely to Carver's era, to that particular kind of music?
JMacM: I share a fascination for that sort of music [Tudor-era polyphony] with a whole lot of composers: Maxwell Davies, Birtwistle and the rest. There's a composer's fascination for that complex rhythm in that kind of British music. But Carver, like many British composers then, did study the works of Flemish [polyphonists] and other composers from other cultures.
SP: Is there any parallel that you draw between yourself and someone like
Carver with respect to your role as a composer? Do you think that you are
fighting for a particular cause? Perhaps his political-religious
cause?
JMacM: I just assimilate from the tendencies inside me. It's not a polemic, it's not designed like that. I just write what's inside my head and what is in my heart. Obviously I'm aware that there's an extramusical stimulus. But I'd like to think that because I'm a musician, my music is a universal language, so that it has the potential to speak to everybody, regardless of their religious beliefs.
SP: There is such a thing as a univeral spirituality, isn't there?
JMacM: Yes, I'm sure there is. The world is a pluralistic place — a catholic place, with a small c.
SP: Does it irk you that you are sometimes accused of being a propagandist by people like me?
JMacM: No, not at all. It's just inevitable that that's sometimes the case. Catholicism with a capital C is, or should be, always open to dialogue and discussion and cultural engagement with the rest of the world.
SP: Yet there's all that dogma, isn't there? Doesn't the existence of all those severe and unrealistic strictures bother you?
JMacM: Sometimes it does, yes. I'm a liberal Catholic, a left-winger, though maybe that aspect's less prominent these days.
SP: Going back to O bone Jesu for a moment, you actually have an advantage stylistically over Carver, don't you? Because you have the freedom to specify in your score dynamic and tempo indications that he did not [because the necessary conventions of notation didn't yet exist]. And you take that advantage to its limits.
JMacM: Because the text
is very florid and very expressive. It's a gorgeous, sensual text. I suppose
it's the physicality of music that's always impressed me, the sensuous nature.
That's just as important as the spiritual aspect. In fact, they are one and the
same thing. So I really wanted to make something gorgeous as opposed to
something austere.
SP: I often ask this of composers, because it's one of the things about the creative process that most fascinates me. When you set about composing, what's the process that happens to you? Obviously there's the inspiration, the idea that occurs in first place. But what happens then? Do you just sit down and write? Do you make plans? Do you know the end when you begin?
JMacM: A lot of pieces undergo years of gestation. Once a piece is commissioned, I need a sense of objectivity and distance so that I can have an overview, so I can feel and see what the line and structure of a piece is going to be. Therefore the structural thinking of a potential piece is just as important as anything. I think in terms of drama and shape, structure and emotion. The building blocks of this piece were simple — different harmonizations, different textures. It's sculptural. So that was a huge step along the way.
SP: What else is happening musically with you right now?
JMacM: I'm writing a third symphony which is a joint commission from the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the NHK Orchestra in Japan. Charles Dutoit is giving the premiere in Tokyo. And I've just finished a big ensemble piece — a kind of mini-violin concerto for the LSO Ensemble and tape. It was good to go back into the studio, and I've not done that sort of London Sinfonietta-sized piece before. It's for the opening of the LSO's St Luke's Centre [a new rehearsal and facilities location in a fine Hawskmoor church which opens in December 2002]. It's called — let me think now, what is it? — A Deep but Dazzling Darkness. It's a quote from Henry Vaughan's poem "The Night," about the nature of God. But it's more to do with the discovery that, before St. Cecilia was patron saint of music, it was Job, which is an extraordinary thing. There are pictures of Job sitting there in his dung heap being visited not by angels but by musicians. So the piece has evocations of old sounds, though not old instruments themselves.
SP: Each time you sit down to [write] a piece, do you have to find a language
for it, or is there a language you can see as "my language"?
JMacM: I think now that it's the same language that suggests itself every time. There are so many possible directions. I have this straightforward attitude to tonality which I know now will take its own direction, according to the context. And then there's the context where tonality is more complex. I still have faith in the common triad.
SP: Are you also conscious of being a particularly eclectic composer? To my ear, O bone Jesu has moments of sheer Poulenc in it, for instance.
JMacM: Not really. I suppose I'm encouraged by all sorts of composers. People like Lutoslawksi, Schnittke ... many different composers.
SP: What about this new symphony? Do you find the act of writing a symphony, and actually calling something a symphony, intimidating?
JMacM: Maybe the first time I did it, yes. But not really now. I believe in the symphony. After all, there are all those contemporary composers who've written fantastic symphonies — Maxwell Davies, Schnittke, Henze, Tippett. So it's tried and tested as a means of making the big statement. I think I desire to make a claim on it based on that. And it still has a connotation of [being an] organism. The subtitle of this work, by the way, is "Silence."
SP: Because silence is a kind of music?
JMacM: Yes, absolutely. I'm reading Shusaku Endo's book Silence, which is about the plurality of East and West, about different perspectives.
SP: Do you live in places of silence?
JMacM: I suppose so, more or less. Not anywhere remote, but quiet enough. Although I have three children — the eldest is nearly twelve and the twins nearly nine — who are wonderful but noisy! No, they are quite good really. You have to get through two doors to get to my study. And they know when to be quiet.
SP: You also seem to be doing quite a lot of conducting these days.
JMacM: Yes, I've been a couple of years with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra as Composer/Conductor and that's going quite well.
SP: Do the two activities ever threaten to threaten each other?
JMacM: Oh, I wouldn't let them! Silence and solitude are necessary because that's where the music comes from. But working with musicians just seems natural to me.
SP: But surely there must be times when you are facing deadlines but you have a conducting engagement in the way?
JMacM: That may not be a bad thing, actually. But yes, it does force you
to be very careful with your time. If finishing a piece means letting something
go, then so be it.
