Influences
MacMillan's music is infused with the spiritual and the political. His Roman Catholic faith has inspired many of his sacred works; for example, Magnificat (1999), and several Masses. This central strand of his life and compositions was marked by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in early 2005, with a survey of his music entitled From Darkness into Light. MacMillan and his wife are lay Dominicans, and he has collaborated with Michael Symmons Roberts, a Catholic poet, and also Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Scottish traditional music has also had a profound musical influence, and is frequently discernible in his works. When the Scottish Parliament was reconvened in 1999 after 292 years, a fanfare composed by MacMillan accompanied the Queen into the chamber. Weeks after the opening ceremony, MacMillan launched an outspoken attack on anti-Catholicism in Scotland in a speech entitled "Scotland's Shame".
MacMillan's use of (even subliminally) familiar themes has perhaps made his music more accessible. This accessibility is demonstrated by the range of his liturgical music: his Mass of 2000 was commissioned by Westminster Cathedral and contains sections which the congregation may join in singing. Similarly, the St Anne's Mass and Galloway Mass do not require advanced musicianship, being designed to be taught to a congregation.
One of his most important commissions (by the Bishops' Conferences of England & Wales and of Scotland) was to write a new mass setting for choir and congregation to be sung at two of the three masses celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI during his Apostolic and state visit to Great Britain in 2010. First sung at mass at Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, on 16 September it was sung again at the mass and beatification of—as of the time of that ceremony—Blessed John Henry Newman at Cofton Park, Birmingham, on 19 September). He was also commissioned to write a setting in Latin of Jesus' words to St. Peter (as described in St. Matthew chapter 16, verse 18, 'You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church') for the Pope's entry at mass at Westminster Cathedral on 18 September; sung in recognition that Pope Benedict is the (265th) successor of St. Peter and thus supreme pastor and leader on earth of the 'one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church' (Nicene Creed).
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“Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. Once and again one of those great influences which we call a Cause arises in the midst of a nation. Men of strenuous minds and high ideals come forward.... The attacks they sustain are more cruel than the collision of arms.... Friends desert and despise them.... They stand alone and oftentimes are made bitter by their isolation.... They are doing nothing less than defy public opinion, and shall they convert it by blows. Yes.”
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“I don’t believe in villains or heroes, only in right or wrong ways that individuals are taken, not by choice, but by necessity or by certain still uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances and their antecedents.”
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