James MacMillan's "The World's Ransoming"

Synopsis

Many composers have produced works inspired by their deep religious faith: in the 18th century, the sacred music of the devout Lutheran church musician Johann Sebastian Bach being a notable example.

Even in our more secular age, this is sometimes the case. The contemporary Scottish composer James MacMillan’s works have explicit Christian themes, and, like Franz Liszt in the 19th century, MacMillan has even taken minor religious orders in the Roman Catholic Church.

On commission from the London Symphony, MacMillan wrote three interrelated orchestral works, two concertos and a symphony, all based on the Passion and Resurrection story. The first of these, entitled “The World’s Ransoming,” for English horn and orchestra, focused on Maundy Thursday of Holy Week, and was premiered at the Barbican Center in London on today’s date in 1996.

Of this piece, MacMillan wrote, “’The World's Ransoming’ includes musical references to [traditional liturgical] plainsongs for that day, as well as a Bach chorale … which I have heard sung in the eucharistic procession … The title of the piece comes from St. Thomas Aquinas's [Latin] hymn ‘Pange Lingua’.”

An English translation of part of the Aquinas hymn reads:

Sing, my tongue, the Savior's glory,

Of His Flesh, the mystery sing;

Destined, for the world's ransom,

From a virgin’s womb to spring.

Music Played in Today's Program

James MacMillan (b. 1959) – The World's Ransoming (Christine Pendrill, English horn; BBC Scottish Symphony; Osmo Vänskä, cond.) BIS 989

On This Day

Births

• 1906 - Norwegian composer Klaus Egge, in Gransherad, Telemark

• 1913 - American composer and pianist Peggy Stuart-Coolidge in Swampscott, Mass.;

• 1952 - English composer Dominic Muldowney, in Southhampton

• 1965 - Scottish composer and percussionist Evelyn Glennie, in Aberdeen

Deaths

• 1730 - French composer and flutist Jean-Baptiste Loeillet, age 49, in London

Premieres

• 1924 - Webern: Six Bagatelles, Op. 9, for string quartet , in Donauschingen (Germany), by the Amar Quartet

• 1973 - Penderecki: Symphony No. 1 in Peterborough Cathedral by the London Symphony, conducted by the composer

• 1976 - Richard Wernick: "Visions of Terror and Wonder" for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado; This work won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1977

• 1996 - John Williams "Summon the Heroes," a six-minute theme for the 1996 Summer Olympics, commissioned by the Atlanta Olympic Organizing Committee

Others

• 1942 - Arturo Toscanini conducts the American premiere of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 ("Leningrad") on a NBC Symphony broadcast; The world premiere performance by the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra had occurred on March 1, 1942, in Kuybishe, the wartime seat of the Soviet government