Beauty, Music, and Faith: Sir James MacMillan
Image Courtesy of Katie W. Evans
By MaggieMae Dethlefsen
Music “‘helps carry the prayers of the ordinary people to God.’” Sir James MacMillan explained to the director of choral activities at CUA, Peter Kadeli. MacMillan is one of the most successful contemporary (Catholic) composers,. He drawings his inspiration from his Scottish roots. and was at He visited CUA for the Welcoming Children in Worship project, part of a grant funded by the Lilly Foundation awarded to the School of Theology and Religious Studies. This is a project that is focusing “on encouraging Catholics to explore and utilize different worship resources, including sacred music.”
MacMillan is a composer that attracted attention in 1990 with the premiere of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie. He has had over 500 performances all around the world and. He was also featured in 1993 and 2019 at the Edinburgh Festival, 1997 Southbank Centre, 2005 BBC’s Barbican Composer Weekend, and the 2012 Grafenegg Festival. He “ read music at Edinburgh University and took Doctoral studies in composition at Durham University with John Casken. After working as a lecturer at Manchester University, he returned to Scotland and settled in Glasgow.” He was also notably “awarded a Knighthood in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday honours and his anthem Who Shall Separate Us? was commissioned for the 2022 funeral of HM Queen Elizabeth II and . He is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.”
MacMillan shared that music has always been an important part of his life, and that he “‘began to realize that even in our local Catholic life, music was an important ingredient,” he said. “It wasn’t just added on as an extra. It was actually at the core of our liturgical life.’” Sharing that music is a part of the church’s creativity he added that when composers write music for the church it is not “‘an act of egotism or narcissism. It’s a great responsibility for the composer when he or she writes the liturgy … you are writing to carry the thoughts and prayers and meditations of the people of God, to the altar of God.’”
MacMillan describes beauty and how in the Catholic faith “beauty is God.” He expanded on how truth, beauty, and goodness are so interconnected and how to have one you have the others. MacMillan expanded on how “‘They’re all attending and serving each other. I have heard some great sermons throughout my life on truth and on goodness, [but] not enough on beauty yet. So maybe the Church needs to address that, to inculcate a love of beauty, a search for beauty amongst people of God.’” He went on to say how music by nature is a “spiritual art form,” expanding by saying that “there’s something in the music itself that seems to connect to the infinite, that opens a door or a window [to] the divine, to the numinous.”
The CUA community was honored to have Sir James MacMillan on campus to talk about beauty, music, and faith. They were honored to hear his wisdom and hear him talk about the importance of music and faith in our lives and in the church community in general.
