Page 232 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

composers who have written a Passion since 2000; others, like Tan Dun and Philip
Glass, have reimagined the Passion genre to include Buddha and Ramakrishna.

“You imagine the Passion text as being of antiquity and in a sense not of modernity,”
Mr. MacMillan said. “But Penderecki’s ‘St. Luke Passion’ in the late 1960s showed
that even using some of the most forthright modern musical language, there was real
scope to re-enter this traditional world, the greatest story ever told, as it were, and to
tell it anew with a new language. And ever since there’s a number of very different
kinds of composers retreading these steps.”

Mr. MacMillan plans to return to the Passion story, to set the words of St. Matthew
and St. Mark. But for the moment he’s working on something more joyful: a
Christmas oratorio.

MacMillan: Stabat Mater

Nov. 7 at Alice Tully Hall, Manhattan; lincolncenter.org.

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