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IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BACH'S ST. MATTHEW PASSION: THE PASSION SETTINGS OF DAVID LANG AND JAMES MACMILLAN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2013

Dominic Wells
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Abstract

In 2007, two high-profile musical responses to the Christian Passion narrative were written: the little match girl passion, by American composer David Lang, and Scottish composer James MacMillan's St John Passion. A devout Catholic, MacMillan's faith has influenced almost every work he has written to date, and a passion setting therefore seemed inevitable. Lang, on the other hand, has Jewish roots, and is relatively secular in his choice of extra-musical themes in his works: even when using sacred texts, he usually sets them in a secular context. Unsurprisingly, MacMillan's and Lang's contrasting approaches towards the Christian Passion resulted in fundamentally different works, yet both composers cite Bach as a key inspiration in their settings. This study examines the extent to which the influence of Bach's St Matthew Passion, in particular, is present in this pair of 21st-century passions, with regard to both their music and their theology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Volume 67 , Issue 264 , April 2013 , pp. 40 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

1 The Lang première took place on 25 October, 2007, the MacMillan on 27 April 2008.

2 Lang: the little match girl passion, Theatre of Voices/Ars Nova Copenhagen/Paul Hillier, Harmonia mundi, 2009: HMU 807496; MacMillan: St John Passion, Christopher Maltman/London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra/Sir Colin Davis, LSO Live, 2009: LSO0671.

3 These include three works for the three days of the Easter Triduum: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil. The works correspond to these three days respectively: The World's Ransoming (a concertante piece for cor anglais and orchestra); Cello Concerto; and Symphony: ‘Vigil’.

4 <http://bangonacan.org/about_us/full_history>

5 The soprano plays brake drum and sleighbell; the alto, crotales; the tenor, glockenspiel; and the bass, bass drum and tubular bells.

6 David Lang, programme note to the little match girl passion (2007), <http://www.schirmer.com/default.aspx?TabId=2420&State_2874=2&workId_2874=36137>

7 Pyper, Hugh S., ‘Crucifixion in the Concert Hall: Secular and Sacred in James MacMillan's Passion of St John’, Literature and Theology, 23/3 (2009), pp. 244–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 This took place on Friday 2 April 2010 at 7 pm. The performers were Mark Stone (Christus), the Choir of King's College, the Philharmonia Chorus and the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Stephen Cleobury.

9 David Lang, 7 April 2008: <http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=89442735&m=89450583>

10 Acts I: 9.

11 James MacMillan, ‘Conceived in Silence’ in The Guardian, 25 April 2008, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/apr/25/classicalmusicandopera>

12 David Lang, in a radio interview with John Schaeffer, 9 November 2009, http://culture.wnyc.org/articles/features/2009/nov/09/david-lang-mash-makes-us-debut/.

13 The Brockes-Passion was set to music by numerous composer of the German Baroque period, including Telemann (1716), Handel (1715–6), Keiser (1712), Mattheson (1718) and Fasch (1723).

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17 David Lang, programme note to the little match girl passion (2007), http://www.schirmer.com/default.aspx?TabId=2420&State_2874=2&workId_2874=36137.

18 This quotation was taken from the Radio Netherlands Worldwide Website: <http://www.rnw.nl/english/radioshow/st-matthew-passion-a-tradition-development>.

19 Bess Twiston-Davies in interview with James MacMillan: ‘My Art is shaped by my Faith’, The Times, 9 April 2009: <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6063170.ece>.

20 James MacMillan, programme note to: Why is this night different? (2008) http://www.boosey.com/cr/music/James-MacMillan-Why-is-this-night-different/3628.

21 Hugh S. Pyper, ‘Crucifixion in the Concert Hall’, p. 350.

22 David Lang, programme note to: evening morning day (2007), printed in Lang: the little match girl passion, Theatre of Voices/Ars Nova Copenhagen/Paul Hillier, Harmonia mundi, 2009: HMU 807496 (SACD), p. 7.

23 The text for Quickening is by Catholic poet Michael Symmons Roberts. This extract comes from the work's third movement, ‘Poppies’, lines 5–8.

24 David Lang, in a radio interview with John Schaeffer, 9 November 2009: http://culture.wnyc.org/articles/features/2009/nov/09/david-lang-mash-makes-us-debut/.

25 Bess Twiston-Davies in interview with James MacMillan: ‘My Art is shaped by my Faith’, The Times, 9 April 2009: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6063170.ece.

26 Blume, Friedrich, ‘Outline of a New Picture of Bach’, Music & Letters, 44/3 (1963) pp. 214–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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28 Scruton, Roger. The Aesthetics of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, p. 490.