THIS week’s Icon comes at the suggestion of an esteemed reader who feels the series has lacked classical music peeps, which is a good call.

You may think this omission is due to your correspondent’s ignorance, which is a disgraceful, if substantially correct, allegation. Though I listen to classical music several times a week, I know – as with literature, visual art and even football these days – nothing technical aboot the subject. 

I like best yon French Impressionists, while paying little attention to major composers, particularly early ones, who conjure visions of fops in powdered wigs prancing on the dance floor.

Like most decent men, I cordially detest all forms of dancing, and have a proletarian’s disdain for the aristocracy.

Where this week’s Icon sits among those arguably peculiar introductory remarks is anyone’s guess. Sir James MacMillan is neither French nor aristocratic and, according to leading authorities on the matter, does not wear a wig.

He has been described as “arguably Britain’s most important composer” (Catholic Herald). In The [Glasgow] Herald, Cate Devine has talked of his music “taking the listener by the throat then heading out on the most profoundly turbulent journey”.

In a five-star review of a recent Scottish Chamber Orchestra concert at Glasgow’s City Halls, our classical music critic Keith Bruce praised the “lovely choral work” of his folk-inspired setting of Burns’s early song Composed in August (aka Now Westlin Winds).

Last November, Keith also gave five stars for a performance at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall of MacMillan’s Christmas Oratorio, “one of his most brilliantly constructed … pieces of work” featuring “melodious harmonies and challenging unison singing, with swelling crescendos and rumbling darkness”.

Anti-indy crusade
Much of MacMillan’s work is inspired by his Catholicism but also by Scotland, at least the nicer, non-sectarian Scotland. He’s been a fierce critic of the other version, and also of independence, a stance that made him many friends on social media.

So, bit of a dude. His dudeship began on July 16, 1959, when he was born in the cosmopolitan North Ayrshire town of Kilwinning, with the family later moving to Cumnock, in East Ayrshire. His mother had studied music at school, and both parents played piano.

James’s music-loving maternal grandfather, George Loy, a coal miner in Auchinleck, played the euphonium, took the boy to colliery band practices, gave him organ tutor books, and encouraged him in the cornet and trumpet.

“My grandfather and his friends found beauty in music and in the walks through these hills and fields,” James has recalled. “When you’re down in the dark bowels of the earth, you want to reach out from the dark place.” Later, he composed a piece depicting the old Barony Colliery’s machinery.

His first “electrifying” musical experience occurred on a family holiday when, aged five or six, he heard Gregorian chant at St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral in Edinburgh.

It was, he said, “magical”. Another formative musical experience occurred when a teenage aunt introduced him to the “visceral excitement” of The Beatles. James attended Cumnock Academy, which he enjoyed, as it featured “lots of music”.  He sang in the choir which, unusually, tackled the complexities of Palestrina and Bach.

He also joined a rock group, was “blown away” by seeing John McLaughlin play guitar and, even today, counts as one of his “guilty pleasures” listening to Tales From Topographic Oceans, the 1973 concept album by Yes that even prog rock enthusiasts find challenging.

He studied composition at Embra Yoonie and Durham, earning a  PhD, then lectured in music at the Victoria University of Manchester from 1986 to 1988.

Returning to Scotland, he became associate composer with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, but his career really took off after the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s premiere of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie at the Proms in 1990. Gowdie was executed, arguably unfairly, for witchcraft in 17th-century Scotland.

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Scots in harmony
MORE high-profile commissions followed, including a percussion concerto for fellow Scot Evelyn Glennie. Veni Veni Emmanuel premiered in 1992 and has has received over 500 performances worldwide.

Other major works include the cantata Seven Last Words from the Cross,

Quickening for soloists, mixed choirs and orchestra, the operas Inès de Castro and The Sacrifice, St John Passion, St Luke Passion, and Symphony No.5: Le grand Inconnu.

When the Scottish Parliament was reconvened in 1999, a fanfare composed by MacMillan accompanied Queen Elizabeth into the Chamber. Another important commission was a new mass for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI, one of his spiritual heroes, during his visit to Britain in 2010.

He also wrote a setting of the biblical text Tu es Petrus for the Pope’s entry to Westminster Cathedral. More recently, he composed a musical tribute for the aforementioned Queen’s funeral.

All of which sounds rather grand, but Sir James has never forgotten his roots, setting up in 2014 the annual Cumnock Tryst festival, featuring an eclectic range of community projects, new composers, star names, and new works from the boy himself.

“It was not a question of imposing high culture on the community,” he has said, adding: “My grandfather and his colleagues in the mines could aspire to classical music. In some places it has been appropriated by the wealthy and perceived as elitist, but that has not been my experience …”

In 1999, weeks after the opening ceremony of the Scottish Parliament, in a speech at Edinburgh Festival Fringe called Scotland’s Shame, MacMillan launched a vigorous attack on anti-Catholic sectarianism. That caused a right stooshie, not least in The Herald’s letters pages, where one reader described the speech as “a courageous and laudable act”.

Unionist of note 
NO bigger stooshie in Scotland in recent years than independence, and MacMillan – said to be a quiet man privately – steamed in on the side of the Union. At one point, in a-spectacularly well-thought out criticism of the pro-independence National Collective of artists, he said: “I don’t understand artists who suck up to government politicians, or those who want to huddle in ‘collectives’ like Mussolini’s cheerleaders.”

Later, he said: “I didn’t say people were Mussolini’s cheerleaders. I used a simile that was lost in translation.” I see.

MacMillan, whose political journey has taken him from the Young Communist League through supporting Labour’s Left to voting Tory to bemused neutrality, appears to have composed himself and mellowed generally in recent mimes, positing the sentiment that “music and the arts can be a healing force, and if there are wounds to be healed I certainly want to be involved in that.” 

Amen to that.