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Exploring Engagement and Detachment in James MacMillan's Seven Last Words
Abstract:The emotional detachment that is required for liturgy has maintained itself as the most important thing throughout, but there are moments when that objectivity breaks down and subjectivity... takes over.During his interview with Mandy Hallam in 2007, MacMillan seems to suggest that because it uses the liturgy Seven Last Words is essentially an objective setting of the various texts. Aside from the philosophical difficulty inherent in the very notion of subjectivity and objectivity this is a strange distinction for a composer to make, and especially one so steeped in the rituals and observances of the Catholic church.It is however entirely consistent within MacMillan's composition aesthetic to view composition as an expression of dualities. Many of his ideas are shaped by theological and musical perspectives framed in terms of balancing dualities: thus, theologically, God and Man(kind), Heaven and Earth, Body and Soul translate, musically, into consonance and dissonance, complexity and simplicity, tension and resolution and so on. It is the way these ideas interact in his music that produces MacMillan's particular sound world.The idea that there are only perhaps just 'two moments' of subjectivity in Seven Last Words seems therefore rather unlikely in work which essentially explores the core belief of Christian faith and the human response to it.This lecture will first explore some of the difficulties inherent in dividing the subjective and the objective into independent positions, and then, using analysis and interpretation, will show how MacMillan's musical response to the liturgical text in Seven Last Words almost always exhibits a balancing tension of both these and other dualities.
- Speaker
- Richard McGregor (Emeritus Professor of Music at University of Cumbria)
- Hosted by
- Music Department
- Venue
- MacRobert Building
- Contact
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Free and open to the public