SUBTLE CELEBRATION

JAMES MACMILLAN talks to RODERIC DUNNETT
about composing sacred and liturgical music

<< Continued from page 6

'Again, these two movements (the Sanctus and Benedictus) require, I feel, a little more subtle thought than the usual brash shouts of joy. In my setting, the Sanctus begins brooding and dark, with low organ, and builds by stages to the first Osanna - which is loud and florid! The Benedictus introduces a new theme, and is altogether more tentative and mysterious, before winding down back through the opening music in the final Osanna, and subsiding into the depths again. But just at that moment, as the choir subsides, an organ passage wanders up into the heights, lending a feeling of uplift and resolution.

'At the Precentor's request, I've composed a new setting of the Eucharistic Prayer as well as the Sursum Corda. It's very simple music "We come to you, Father, with praise and thanksgiving" ...on just two or three notes; but I've set it so that the Sanctus and Benedictus can be introduced into it and make musical as well as liturgical sense. The Consecration itself is also incorporated : so the elevation of gifts will be accompanied by the organ, as I think it was in centuries gone by. That optional music is there, should priest and musicians want to make use of it.

'I've also set the Memorial Acclamations : the music is the same for all four options, so whichever Acclamation they choose to sing, they will have in effect learned the music for all four. These Acclamations, the Sursum Corda and, at the very end, the Great Amen are the three principal points where the congregation joins in.

'The Agnus Dei is probably the most mysterious and intimate of the movements. I tried to evoke a sense of the whole piece having travelled from the most melodically and modally simple starting point, drawing on an element of the Celtic phrasing which I like using in my music, until by the Agnus Dei, it's become more distant, reflective, more abstract. Thus the Agnus is more fragmentary - the words themselves are fragmented, so that even the word "Lamb" is dissected and passed around the voices; and there are clusters between the voices and in organ : it has a kind of directionless character about it, very different in concept and emotional impact from the Kyrie.'