Lenten Listening
April 17, 2019
ERIC R. writes:
The Scottish born Roman Catholic James MacMillan (b. 1959) produced a real gem of 20th-Century music with the intensely expressive and sonically varied Seven Last Words from the Cross for choir and string orchestra. The work was commissioned in 1993 by the BBC. The writing for choir is very difficult (highly dissonant tonalities), and exploits almost every aspect of the human voice, including glissandi, speaking and whispering. The amount of varied material the composer gets out of the limited instrumentation of choir and strings is impressive.
The string orchestra does much more than just accompany the singing. The strings are their own voice, and in the last movement, you can even hear some hints of Scottish folk music. There are times when only the choir is featured, others when only the strings are called upon. But mainly, choir and orchestra work with each other to produce an integrated work of modern art.
What is wonderful about music after the hyper-modern movement of the early to mid-20th century is the freedom allowed artists remains but the extreme experimentation has passed. There was nowhere else for music to go after Anton Webern, Elliot Carter, Pierre Boulez and Meredith Monk. Every aspect of music, tonality, rhythm, melody, instrumentation was blown up! John Cage dropped a grand piano onto a football field from a helicopter, for Pete’s sake!
As eye-rolling as some of modern music seems, the modern composer can rightly do anything he wants now. He may use a mixture of modern techniques of dissonance and odd instrumentation, but also what Lenard Bernstein called “Music of the Earth,” or tunes, triadic harmonies, and repetition.
MacMillan’s Seven Last Words is a perfect example of this freedom afforded to modern artists at the service of expression. This work is highly dissonant, and uses masses of sound at some points (held tone clusters, think Ligeti in 2001: A Space Odyssey), but spans of silence are also employed. Silence is something you won’t hear a lot of in 18th- and 19th-century music. For example, in the Seventh of The Words (the last movement), the strings incorporate sustained silence to express the feeling of “Into Thy Hands I Commend My Spirit” and in order to balance a 45-minute piece of music.
The ending of this piece is very complicated. The tonality is not resolved, indeed the piece ends on a minor second (a black key next to a white key on the piano). And the length of the ending is like a troubled sigh. Is there something after? Is this an ending? Is it sad, is it hopeful? Are we still in the Crucifixion, or are we looking forward to the Resurrection that we know is coming? The ending is brilliant.
The attached Youtube performance is of the Swedish Norrbotten Chamber orchestra and Erik Westbergs Vokalensemble. The rest of the work is here. The musicians are performers, using quasi theatrics, including blocking, levels, and some acting, that I think are appropriate and effective, as unconventional as they are.
To those only exposed to 18th- and 19th-century classical music, this will be a challenge but it is an absolute masterpiece in its ability to express what it means to express.
James MacMillan
