This is a past event
Dr Cooke from the University of Aberdeen discusses the liturgical music of James MacMillan.
Title: ‘Assimilating the Vernacular’: James MacMillan’s Mass (2000)
Abstact:
In a telling statement about his aesthetic from 2003, James MacMillan stated:
It is often said of Tavener’s music that it is a celebration of the risen Christ. Whereas many have said about my music that I seem preoccupied with the crucified Christ, that I seem to be drawn again and again to the Passion. ( James MacMillan, ‘God, Theology and Music’ in Darlington and Kreider (ed.), Composing Music for Worship (Canterbury Press, 2003), 40.)
It may seem slightly incongruous to look specifically at the liturgical music of James MacMillan, a composer for whom the liturgy and the wider influence of Christianity has had such bearing on not just the majority of his musical output, but on his entire compositional ethos and personal philosophy. For the liturgy has provided the basis and starting impulse for not just MacMillan’s large corpus of sacred choral pieces, but for the bulk of his instrumental works, many of which may have been previously thought of as abstract. However, it is precisely this over-riding influence of the liturgy and Catholicism that makes an in-depth look at the purely liturgical works all the more relevant; for here we find the composer stripped of the myriad of allusions and implications that characterise other works and find him working in a specifically explicit manner. Gone are the liturgical chants buried deep in an orchestral texture or the oblique references to liturgical practice – in this paper I will aim to show MacMillan at his most direct and communicative.
- Speaker
- Dr Phillip Cooke (University of Aberdeen)
- Hosted by
- Department of Music
- Venue
- MR055, MacRobert Building
- Contact
-
Free and open to the public.