Finding audiences for contemporary classical music is problematic: people are wary, unprepared to gamble the price of a ticket on an evening of music that may be cold, incomprehensible and even depressing.
In pursuit of an audience, new music is often slipped in between classical or romantic favourites - an ostrich surreptitiously released into a field of thoroughbred stallions. This was what happened to a piece by 30-year-old Scottish composer James MacMillan in a 1990 Saturday night London Prom when one of his works was slid in between a Beethoven symphony and a Sibelius violin concerto. To everyone's surprise the work, The Confessions of Isobel Gowdie, wowed the audience and catapulted MacMillan into musical stardom.
Now 45, MacMillan's oeuvre is immense, his reputation secure. His percussion concerto Veni, Veni Emmanuel has been performed more than 300 times and his works are played by many major orchestras and soloists. In 2003, his Third Symphony was premiered in Tokyo and last year his ballet Shambards was premiered by the New York City Ballet. Last weekend, at various music venues centring on London's Barbican, a large selection of his works were performed over three days in a series of broadcast and televised concerts and recitals accompanied by films and talks.
Key adjectives associated with MacMillan's music are: Catholicism, communication and socialism. Like fellow contemporary composers John Tavener and Arvo Part, MacMillan's music is suffused with Christian spirituality, and this was reflected by the title of the weekend tribute, Darkness into Light. Were a similar weekend to be devoted to Tavener or Part, the title would probably have been Light as their music goes directly to paradise whereas MacMillan gets there via purgatory. In this way, he is like Beethoven, depicting the whole struggle and pain.
MacMillan's music is rhythmic, full of colour and big orchestral brushstrokes, often raw. It speaks to audiences, exciting and moving them. Words such as 'emotional response' and 'engagement' were long anathema in contemporary music, MacMillan has, in a potent way, reinstated them.
Highlights of the weekend were Sir Andrew Davis conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in MacMillan's 1989 piece, Tryst, an astonishing work, brutal, manic, and at times mad, yet in the end shot through with an exquisite tenderness. And MacMillan conducting the BBC Philharmonic in his moving The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, inspired by the true story of a woman burned at the stake for being a witch 400 years ago.
