Sir James MacMillan is a modest man for such a famous composer, but he knows what I mean when I compare him to God. Composers, like other artists, are sub-creators under God; they bring something into being out of nothing. “That’s what Pope John Paul II said in his letter to artists,” says Sir James. “We’re a mirror and a ripple extending from creation. What we do is extended creativity. We instinctively understand what it means to love creation into existence.”
Sir James is in the fullest sense a Catholic composer; even his secular pieces are infused with a religious sensibility. He can get spirituality under the skin even of those who might think of themselves as hostile to religion. “Music is a universal language that transcends the things that divides us,” he says. And the Christian component of that language is, he says, especially evident in classical music. “There’s a great acknowledgement that so much of it springs from our Judeo-Christian heritage, and a great engagement with the works of the past that come from Judeo-Christian beliefs. There’s a respect and gratitude even among secular people for that. It’s a good meeting place for believers and non-believers.”
“In his own religious background, Sir James comes from a mixed tradition: his paternal grandfather was Presbyterian – and indeed was one of the Black and Tans who after serving in Flanders at the front was sent into the toughest British unit in the Anglo-Irish war – who married an Irish Catholic from Galloway; his mother’s side was also Irish, on the republican side.”
The contemporary loss of Christian faith has been particularly evident in Scotland – a poll in 2019 suggested that 70 per cent of young Scots think of themselves as non-religious. “There’s a kind of apathy in Scotland,” he says, “but it’s been a post-Catholic country for generations. There’s a loss of identity in the younger generation, a loss of connection. At a time when the west faces existential threats, we westerners have to remember who we are and find our common roots.”
The loss of tradition has also been a problem, he thinks, within the Church, especially in the liturgy. “There’s been a kind of iconoclasm, a forgetting of the balance of tradition.” This is not, he says, to criticise the Second Vatican Council, and he’s only ever been to a couple of celebrations of the Mass in the Extraordinary or Tridentine rite, but “there’s been a decoupling of the Catholic mindset from that deep Catholic tradition. There’s been a kind of functionalism that has settled into the Catholic mindset that forgets about beauty – yet beauty is one of the equal components of that trinity whose other elements are truth and goodness.”
He accepts that the tradition is never static. “Catholic liturgy is a work in progress. Maybe it’s always evolving. There’s always been a strong engagement with secular culture. As one generation loses touch with certain things, another generation will find connections afresh.” He’s been struck, especially on visits to America, by the way that young people, and young families, gravitate to the extraordinary rite. He’s also conscious of the contribution of the monasteries to preserving the tradition, not least through their plainchant.
“Places like Pluscarden Abbey have helped keep these flames alive,” he says. “People discover these connections by accident. They discover something wonderful, a gateway to the nature of God. The tradition of the monasteries is almost a hidden element of Catholicism.”
What you might call his missionary work for Christianity extends beyond his compositions. He recently made a series of BBC radio programmes, Faith in Music, on the religious lives of famous composers, including those who don’t immediately come to mind in this context, (such as Leonard Bernstein whose father wanted him to be a rabbi), who engaged creatively with the Churches. He is irked by the wilful attempt by many musical commentators and critics to exclude composers’ religion from discussion of their work, even palpably religious composers such as Beethoven and Mozart. “Anyone who says Beethoven wasn’t religious hasn’t read his writings,” he says witheringly. “Though it’s not to say he went regularly to Mass.”
Sir James, then, is combative as well as creative. He has been sceptical of the Scottish National Party’s courting of Catholic votes – they’re not, he thinks, interested in religion. And he was disappointed in the outspoken support for secession among some Scottish clergy at the time of the 2014 referendum – “it split the flock” – and in the failure of the Church to promote reconciliation afterwards. He himself spoke publicly against independence, but he wouldn’t do it again. “It’s not what a composer should be doing”, he says. “Music is a healing force.” Like true religion, then.
Sir James MacMillan is the Artistic Director of The Cumnock Trust, thecumnocktryst.com, whose annual festival will be held in October.
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