A Silence, not a void (from The Tablet)
James MacMillan’s third symphony, to be performed at the 2003 BBC Proms season, challenges the conception that silence is empty. On the contrary, it can be a sign of God’s presence.
James MacMillan’s music is rooted in his political beliefs and in his Catholicism. Music has a transforming power, he argues, but like true spirituality it should be rooted in the struggles of everyday experience. The composer describes himself as a “happily paid up member of a secular society”, who values many of secularity’s fruits as the outcome of the Christian quest for justice throughout the centuries.
MacMillan is angry when the secular world caricatures people of faith as fundamentalist and reactionary. This is simply naïve, he says. “Faith isn’t like that. Many live with uncertainties and failures in their lives. They wonder what the great love of God actually means. We live in a century in which God, on the evidence of outward signs, seems to have abandoned humanity. Yet faith prevails. The quest for the love of God goes on.”
Such questions underpin MacMillan’s third symphony, subtitled ‘Silence’, and inspired by the powerful novel of the same name by the Japanese Catholic author Shusaku Endo. Endo set his story in 17th century Japan, with his main character a Portuguese Jesuit priest at the height of the persecution of the country’s small Christian community. Francis Xavier and two fellow Jesuits had landed there in 1549. The first fruits of his mission were spectacular and within a generation there were 300,000 Christians. Then the shoguns withdrew their toleration of the new faith, expelled the Jesuits and forced Christians to renounce their beliefs. Many of those who refused were executed. Reprieve was granted to those who apostatised by trampling on the fumie, an icon of the Madonna and Child. The persecution of Japan’s Christians almost annihilated the church. Many were burnt alive, while others were tortured by being hung upside down into pits filled with human excreta.
Endo’s protagonist, the Jesuit Sebastian Rodrigues, becomes an apostate in his turn, but only after enduring torture himself and being told that many others will die unless he too recants. He steps on the fumie. Only as he does so, does the hitherto silent Christ speak to him. "Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross."
A fellow-Scot, the Jesuit John McDade, told MacMillan about Endo’s Silence, and suggested it might be material for an opera. When he read the novel, MacMillan was intrigued by Endo’s description of Catholicism as – in contrast to other faiths - “not a solo, but a symphony”. He was attracted to Endo’s repeated use of sound and musical metaphors for silence. Endo’s silence was never emptiness, but a presence, be it the song of the turtledove, the rustle of leafs or the slap of the sea against the shore. “Silence is the midwife to music”, MacMillan says, “One brings forth the other.”
He hesitated before setting to work on his symphony, wary of seeming to pay homage to the imperialism that went in hand in hand with missionary work of the time. However, the tension between the Hellenistic Christian tradition and animist Eastern culture seemed a perfect metaphor for symphonic reflection. Crucially for MacMillan, Endo was a Japanese writer reflecting on human values in a way that transcended cultural context. Endo was profoundly respected in his own country and able to interpret Christianity to the Japanese imagination, which has not in the past grasped its concepts easily, in particular that of the Resurrection.
Endo’s genius, in MacMillan’s eyes, was to open up a deeper meaning of the Christian message, one which could be strongly resonant not merely in Japan, but for Christians everywhere. This identified Jesus with those who fail, who are ineffectual, and who experience shame. It brought into sharp relief the scandal of the Cross - and the defeat it represented.
MacMillan wrestled with the musical colours, which would be appropriate for the work. He thought of using the shakuhachi, or bamboo flute, which is closely associated with the Buddhist Fuke sect, which came to prominence in Japan at the same time as Francis Xavier and his fellow Jesuits made their early conversions. Fuke adherents believed that music was intrinsically sacred. Despite the obvious attraction, MacMillan in the end decided against the shakuhachi, because he was nervous of “dilettante dabbling with other people’s cultures.” However he listened extensively to recordings of shakuhachi music, while he was preparing to write the symphony and this helped him to root the work in a Japanese musical setting.
The score itself has an intimate and anguished quality, echoing Endo’s text. MacMillan deliberately uses small chamber groups within the orchestra as the music builds. Using clusters of instruments helped him to approximate the music of the shakuhachi. The intended intimacy is reinforced with solo passages for violin, cello and piano.
While the work is a symphonic reflection on Endo’s text, it does not echo it in every detail. MacMillan thought hard about how he might represent musically the fumie, the stepping on the face of Jesus and Mary. He rejected every possible solution as somehow too literal. Instead, the sense of betrayal and of spiritual death is inscribed in the music. The reflection was a powerful experience for MacMillan himself: “Would one die for Christ? I was brought up venerating those who died for their faith, and I knew deep down I couldn’t do that. What does Christianity have to say to people who cannot rise to these heroic heights?”
In the slow section of the symphony MacMillan portrays musically Endo’s Swamp, a place of desolation and emptiness, incapable of producing life. Endo described Japan as a swamp in which roots rotted and leafs withered. “We have planted the sapling of Christianity in this swamp”, one of his characters exclaimed.
However, MacMillan adds an optimistic note of his own: the final section of the symphony begins with a deliberate allusion to the opening of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, signalling a new life emerging from the depths and darkness. MacMillan’s meditation on “the Swamp” is also, he says, a comment on Western society. “Our society is a swamp. Christian values and genuine love of God – and I am not saying this in a reactionary sense at all – finds it difficult to take root in a society beguiled by materialism, hedonism and egotism and dominated by a selfish political creed, now dominant and lacking opposition.”
The symphony ends with a bar of silence – the conception and metaphorical point of the entire work. Music and silence are partners for MacMillan, their relationship echoing that between belief and non-belief. Himself a person of faith, he feels great empathy with those of no faith, but who have struggled with the same questions.
Like Endo’s novel, MacMillan’s new symphony is an act of faith. Both works find their deepest hope in the characterisation of Jesus as a companion in disgrace.
James MacMillan’s Symphony No 3, ‘Silence’, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Albert Hall, Thursday 24th July, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, BBC Four TV and on the internet at http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/
James MacMillan’s music is rooted in his political beliefs and in his Catholicism. Music has a transforming power, he argues, but like true spirituality it should be rooted in the struggles of everyday experience. The composer describes himself as a “happily paid up member of a secular society”, who values many of secularity’s fruits as the outcome of the Christian quest for justice throughout the centuries.
MacMillan is angry when the secular world caricatures people of faith as fundamentalist and reactionary. This is simply naïve, he says. “Faith isn’t like that. Many live with uncertainties and failures in their lives. They wonder what the great love of God actually means. We live in a century in which God, on the evidence of outward signs, seems to have abandoned humanity. Yet faith prevails. The quest for the love of God goes on.”
Such questions underpin MacMillan’s third symphony, subtitled ‘Silence’, and inspired by the powerful novel of the same name by the Japanese Catholic author Shusaku Endo. Endo set his story in 17th century Japan, with his main character a Portuguese Jesuit priest at the height of the persecution of the country’s small Christian community. Francis Xavier and two fellow Jesuits had landed there in 1549. The first fruits of his mission were spectacular and within a generation there were 300,000 Christians. Then the shoguns withdrew their toleration of the new faith, expelled the Jesuits and forced Christians to renounce their beliefs. Many of those who refused were executed. Reprieve was granted to those who apostatised by trampling on the fumie, an icon of the Madonna and Child. The persecution of Japan’s Christians almost annihilated the church. Many were burnt alive, while others were tortured by being hung upside down into pits filled with human excreta.
Endo’s protagonist, the Jesuit Sebastian Rodrigues, becomes an apostate in his turn, but only after enduring torture himself and being told that many others will die unless he too recants. He steps on the fumie. Only as he does so, does the hitherto silent Christ speak to him. "Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross."
A fellow-Scot, the Jesuit John McDade, told MacMillan about Endo’s Silence, and suggested it might be material for an opera. When he read the novel, MacMillan was intrigued by Endo’s description of Catholicism as – in contrast to other faiths - “not a solo, but a symphony”. He was attracted to Endo’s repeated use of sound and musical metaphors for silence. Endo’s silence was never emptiness, but a presence, be it the song of the turtledove, the rustle of leafs or the slap of the sea against the shore. “Silence is the midwife to music”, MacMillan says, “One brings forth the other.”
He hesitated before setting to work on his symphony, wary of seeming to pay homage to the imperialism that went in hand in hand with missionary work of the time. However, the tension between the Hellenistic Christian tradition and animist Eastern culture seemed a perfect metaphor for symphonic reflection. Crucially for MacMillan, Endo was a Japanese writer reflecting on human values in a way that transcended cultural context. Endo was profoundly respected in his own country and able to interpret Christianity to the Japanese imagination, which has not in the past grasped its concepts easily, in particular that of the Resurrection.
Endo’s genius, in MacMillan’s eyes, was to open up a deeper meaning of the Christian message, one which could be strongly resonant not merely in Japan, but for Christians everywhere. This identified Jesus with those who fail, who are ineffectual, and who experience shame. It brought into sharp relief the scandal of the Cross - and the defeat it represented.
MacMillan wrestled with the musical colours, which would be appropriate for the work. He thought of using the shakuhachi, or bamboo flute, which is closely associated with the Buddhist Fuke sect, which came to prominence in Japan at the same time as Francis Xavier and his fellow Jesuits made their early conversions. Fuke adherents believed that music was intrinsically sacred. Despite the obvious attraction, MacMillan in the end decided against the shakuhachi, because he was nervous of “dilettante dabbling with other people’s cultures.” However he listened extensively to recordings of shakuhachi music, while he was preparing to write the symphony and this helped him to root the work in a Japanese musical setting.
The score itself has an intimate and anguished quality, echoing Endo’s text. MacMillan deliberately uses small chamber groups within the orchestra as the music builds. Using clusters of instruments helped him to approximate the music of the shakuhachi. The intended intimacy is reinforced with solo passages for violin, cello and piano.
While the work is a symphonic reflection on Endo’s text, it does not echo it in every detail. MacMillan thought hard about how he might represent musically the fumie, the stepping on the face of Jesus and Mary. He rejected every possible solution as somehow too literal. Instead, the sense of betrayal and of spiritual death is inscribed in the music. The reflection was a powerful experience for MacMillan himself: “Would one die for Christ? I was brought up venerating those who died for their faith, and I knew deep down I couldn’t do that. What does Christianity have to say to people who cannot rise to these heroic heights?”
In the slow section of the symphony MacMillan portrays musically Endo’s Swamp, a place of desolation and emptiness, incapable of producing life. Endo described Japan as a swamp in which roots rotted and leafs withered. “We have planted the sapling of Christianity in this swamp”, one of his characters exclaimed.
However, MacMillan adds an optimistic note of his own: the final section of the symphony begins with a deliberate allusion to the opening of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, signalling a new life emerging from the depths and darkness. MacMillan’s meditation on “the Swamp” is also, he says, a comment on Western society. “Our society is a swamp. Christian values and genuine love of God – and I am not saying this in a reactionary sense at all – finds it difficult to take root in a society beguiled by materialism, hedonism and egotism and dominated by a selfish political creed, now dominant and lacking opposition.”
The symphony ends with a bar of silence – the conception and metaphorical point of the entire work. Music and silence are partners for MacMillan, their relationship echoing that between belief and non-belief. Himself a person of faith, he feels great empathy with those of no faith, but who have struggled with the same questions.
Like Endo’s novel, MacMillan’s new symphony is an act of faith. Both works find their deepest hope in the characterisation of Jesus as a companion in disgrace.
James MacMillan’s Symphony No 3, ‘Silence’, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Albert Hall, Thursday 24th July, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, BBC Four TV and on the internet at http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/
posted by Brendan McCarthy at 11:29 AM
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