"I'd like to think my music is a universal language, so that it has the potential to speak to everybody regardless of their religious beliefs," writes James MacMillan in the programme for the BBC Weekend devoted to his music. By the end of day two, however, one was left questioning the validity of his statement.
The works of the great religious composers assert a universality of experience, irrespective of individual creed. MacMillan's fiery Catholicism can, however, be combative, a quality that precludes universalism. His music, variable in quality, is a combination of purity and convulsion. To engage with it is to take part in a religious-political debate in which your own ideological standpoint comes into play.
The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, which shot him to fame in 1990, calls Scottish Protestantism to account for the atrocities committed in its name. Cantos Sagrados inveighs against the torture and execution of prisoners of conscience, while Britannia glances at the troubles in Northern Ireland. All three have a ferocity that is compelling, but elsewhere, MacMillan's dogmatism can turn simplistic.
Quickening, his vast cantata dating from 1999, deals with procreation. A passage in Michael Symmons Roberts's text brings into contentious proximity images of premature birth and the poppies blooming on Flanders Field. The score, modelled on Britten's War Requiem, has a worrying literalness and seems derivative.
On occasion, however, MacMillan does genuinely attain the universality to which he aspires. Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis conveys a sense of timeless spiritual mysteries, while The World's Ransoming contrasts pacifism with violence in a powerful meditation on the events leading to the Crucifixion. None of his music generates the same monumental awe as Messiaen's Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum, which MacMillan placed alongside his own work. The performances - divided between the BBC Symphony and the BBC Philharmonic, with Andrew Davis and MacMillan himself sharing the conducting honours - were exemplary.
