At last - a truly Catholic Passion
James MacMillan's Passion is magnificent, says Damian Thompson
2 May 2008

When we think of music for Holy Week we think of the Catholic Church, but when we think of settings of the Passion we think of the Protestant J S Bach. Perhaps it is because the Church commemorates the suffering and death of Jesus with its own intricate liturgy that Catholic composers have rarely felt the need to set the four Gospel accounts to music.

James MacMillan has risen magnificently to the challenge of creating a Catholic Passion. The first performance of his St John Passion by Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus drew a standing ovation from the Barbican audience last Sunday. Among the first to his feet was the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Bach's Passions supplement the scriptural narrative with arias drawing on pietistic Lutheranism; MacMillan clears a space for a Stabat Mater and also sets the traditional Good Friday "reproaches", a litany of accusations accompanying the veneration of the Cross:

I opened the sea before you,
but you opened my side with a spear ...
I gave you a royal sceptre,
but you gave me a crown of thorns.
I raised you to the height of majesty,
but you have raised me highon a cross.
My people, what have I done to
you? How have I offended you?
Answer me!

And who, precisely, is "you" in that context? It is a measure of the inconvenience of that question that some Catholic parishes omit the reproaches from their Good Friday services, even though they are in the new Missal.

Christopher Maltman, the baritone Christus, almost spat out these words; MacMillan's Jesus conveys raw human anger with the righteous wrath of the Hebrew God, the two knotted together in long melismatic lines reminiscent of Britten's Billy Budd (a Maltman speciality).

The overtones of opera were deliberate - but the operatic language speaks the words of a formal Latin liturgy that the composer believes is spiritually indivisible from the words of the author of John's Gospel.

This is the first Passion to incorporate the action as well as the words of the Roman liturgy in its score. As Jesus is handed over to the soldiers, the chorus sings from the canon, Accipite et manducate ex hoc omnes: hoc est enim corpus quod pro vobis tradetur. And the tinkle of a sanctuary bell is heard.

Elsewhere, there are hints of the refreshing Catholic truculence that we associate with MacMillan: the most piercing fanfares of all celebrate Christ's foundation of the papacy: Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam. (Alas, Dr Rowan Williams showed no signs of shifting uneasily in his seat at this moment.)

MacMillan is, as usual, lavish in his use of percussion: the huge chorus was separated from the orchestra by a veritable iconostasis of gongs, drums and tubular bells. Mightiest of all was the repeated double thud of the timpani.

Where had we heard it before? Ah, yes: Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man. There were fanfares for the uncommon man, too: shimmering trumpets representing the kingship of Jesus, their proclamation poignantly muted at the mention of the crown of thorns.

The high point of Bach's St John Passion are the fugal choruses depicting the hypocritical venom of the Jewish mob. MacMillan's Passion is even more richly choral, since the narrator is a chamber choir singing in closely harmonised chant and the role of Pilate is taken by the large choir.

This redistribution of Pilate's words - also a feature of modern Good Friday services - has the effect of blurring the distinction between the guilt of the Jews (clearly indicated by the author of the Gospel), that of the Roman authorities, and of ourselves, the common man and woman.

This is a serious theological insight, not an exercise in revisionism. Proper, old-fashioned guilt saturates this work. Christ dies with his reproaches still ringing in the audience's ears. There is no peaceful chorus anticipating the glory of Easter. Instead, the work closes with a long orchestral meditation, in which the restless and nervy strings part only briefly to reveal a beautiful Celtic melody before despair sets in again.

In the St John Passion, MacMillan's eclectism allows him to juxtapose the brassy magnificence of Belshazzar's Feast with the histrionics of the opera house and the austerity of the cloister. The great set-piece motets summon up the Renaissance masters and the quieter orchestral writing evokes the pain-racked polyphony of late Beethoven.

Only repeated hearings will tell us whether MacMillan has created a timeless masterpiece; but there can be no doubt that his Passion is a towering monument of Catholic culture.