THE composer Sir James MacMillan has just conducted the world première of his Christmas Oratorio at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, The Netherlands’ most prestigious concert hall. MacMillan has acquired an ever wider following, thanks in part to his Strathclyde Motets and other inspiring sacred anthems.
He has also written large-scale works since his early twenties: undertakings such as the vigorously dramatic Into the Ferment (recorded on Chandos 10092) or his concertos, such as Veni, veni, Emmanuel, which was brilliantly conceived for the deaf percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie.
Five symphonies have ensued, and many of his works have religious titles and humanitarian content. The plight of women has been a theme from the start: Búsqueda, empathising with the desolation of mothers of the desaparacidos, who disappeared during the Argentinian dictatorship; the opera Inês de Castro, championing a doomed 14th-century Galician-Portuguese princess; and The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, grieving for a girl killed during the 17th-century witch mania.
Specifically religious themes and musical material (much drawn from plainsong) permeate the work of this devoutly Roman Catholic composer, embracing particularly explosive treatments of the Passion story, after St Matthew and St John. The force, indeed anger, of his music — MacMillan is not one for understatement — places the latter especially on a par with gems of the Baroque.
Now the furnace of his workplace in Ayrshire, where he has started a music festival, has produced this full-length and, in places, full-blast oratorio. It was given its thrilling première by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir. London, New York, and Melbourne have also collaborated to make this massive undertaking possible.
The opening is unbelievably innocent and pure. Percussion, including two vibraphones, and 13 other instruments offset a folk-like dance in clarinets and, later, multitudinous woodwind with the pure monody of the celesta: a kind of “ambiguity”, as he puts it. The nativity story — in particular, the brutal machinations of Herod — seems ready made for MacMillan, who, as he says, mixes “resonances of childhood with more ominous premonitions”. Murderous tympani cancel the pure opening, which in both halves of the work is solely orchestral
The sheer variety, vigorous alternation (as within the voices of the beautifully sensitive choir here, coached and prepared by Benjamin Goodson, the parts often subdivided), and instrumental invention render this a work that rarely flags: the periodic clustering (essentially tonal) of the chorus is counterpointed by huge outbursts of indignation. Brass batters nerve-jarringly in places, or soothes in chorales or hymn-like interjections that inevitably call to mind Bach’s chorales.
A solo violin, tender or ecstatic, recurring often, indicates both eloquence and dexterity. It first surfaces in the initial soprano solo (Mary Bevan), a setting of the Tudor poet Robert Southwell, 1561-95, whose tender poetry (“The Burning Babe”) reappears in the next soprano solo. Indeed, as in Britten’s War Requiem and works by other composers since, MacMillan incorporates, especially for his two soloists, settings of mystic or nativity-related poetry. Thus he pairs the two soloists, in music both aching and passionate, in one of the most dramatic and in a sense terrifying passages, in which the choir’s serenity calls into question the fierceness of the main word setting.
The baritone — Christopher Maltman on shatteringly powerful form, personifying evil when Herod’s vitriol is contrasted with the Babe’s blamelessness — has his own extended solos or “arias”: a poem of John Donne and later the whole of Milton’s “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”. Here, MacMillan’s finessed structuring is vital in its effect. Passages of monody — sometimes one ominous repeated note in choir or orchestra — can be violent or joyous.
Variety is a crucial ingredient. In the oratorio’s two hefty halves, MacMillan pens music as vigorously dancing as, say, Leonard Bernstein’s, or Zoltán Kodály’s. But, big noises aside, MacMillan confirms how skilled he is in the use of affecting reduced textures, with solo instruments often magically exposed: incredible delicacy that evokes intense wonder (as at “ut animalia viderent”).
As mentioned in the Netherlands Radio coverage (the work was ultimately commissioned for the Dutch NTR Saturday Matinée series), the choral writing is not without the occasional challenge. But a couple of hearings are enough to yield the conviction that choral societies anywhere could take this up in future; and their well-practised choruses would have no problem in mastering all aspects of an exciting work. Any conflict with a regular Christmas Messiah might easily be overcome by skilled seasonal planning.
