Page 159 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

Symphony, prefaced by the composer himself conducting his Second
Symphony. A real feast.

The festival has a special resonance: “I’m very proud that a focus like this
is happening in Scotland, especially in Edinburgh. It’s a festival I’ve loved

since I was a teenager. I’ve been going since the 1970s, and it’s always
had this air of excitement about it.”

His impressive and gripping output displays not just intense emotional
power, but phenomenal sensitivity, a concern for the oppressed, and a
longing to communicate to as wide an audience as possible.

MacMillan has been a devoted Roman Catholic since childhood, attending

church with his family in “a kind of working-class Catholic community”
(he was born in Kilwinning on the west coast, and later grew up in
Cumnock, formerly an Ayrshire mining town).

His own religious commitment embraces his long-lasting response to “the
numinous”. He says: “It’s hard sometimes to account for what came first,
or whether a sense of the numinous was there anyway. Perhaps, there was
something subliminal, a kind of pre-conscious or subconscious association

leading me down the path I have chosen.”

He has composed countless works with a Christian focus or “humanitarian
impulse”. These include a substantial collection of motets, all intense and
profoundly beautiful. “Many”, he recalls, “have been championed
marvellously by The Sixteen and Harry Christophers” (who will conduct
the new symphony). Padre Pio’s Prayer is a particularly touching
example, but he has composed countless others: one of his Strathclyde

Motets, Benedicimus Deum Coeli, was the introit for Wednesday’s
evensong at this year’s Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester.

“I was already composing”, he says, “by the age of around ten.” Does he
feel he and his compositions have changed since his early career? “I can
see my music has changed to a degree, but it’s not something I am aware
of on a daily basis. When I look at old music of mine going back to the
1970s, I’m struck that some compositions I wrote when I was 17 are still

performed.

“It’s a bit like finding old letters that you wrote as a child or a teenager or
a young man, and realising that you’re the same person, essentially. But
there are also important ways you’ve changed, almost unawares. It’s quite
a wistful feeling looking back at your thoughts then, and music you wrote
at the time. You’ve moved on almost without noticing. At 60, I’m

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