Track Listing

1. Introit - Advent
2. Heartbeats
3. Dance - Hocket
4. Transition: Sequence I
5. Gaude, Gaude
6. Transition: Sequence II
7. Dance - Chorale
8. Coda - Easter
9. Henry VIII (1491-1547)
10. John Wilmot (1647-1680)
11. John Churchill (1650-1722)
12. Gordon (1788-1824) and William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
13. Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)
14. Dorothy Mary Hodgkin (b. 1910)
15. Larghetto
16. Allegro moderato
17. Andante

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #107337 in Music
• Released on: 2005-02-22
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Fascinatin' Rhythm
This can be difficult listening, but just when you feel like giving up the composer changes the music so dramatically you are pulled back in. This music is ever changing, ever evolving, constantly exploring new combinations of sounds, textures, rhythms, instruments.

And I have no earthly or spritual notion what the reviewer is talking about when he claims that Christian music has its own sound. That is utter nonsense. And MacMillan's music strains toward some abstract or spiritual meaning but it is not some vague hogwash related to Christian "sounds" whatever those are.

I suggest adventurous listeners give this music a chance; I further suggest they give philsophizing or theologizing a rest. There are strange and beautiful and occasionally harsh landscapes in his music and the effort to explore and experience them is well worth it in my view.

Christian Music
MacMillan is striving for truly 'Christian' music--NOT music that simply mirrors the current cultural trends and differs only in its pious lyrics or intentions (think CCM), but music that is itself shaped by the Christian story. The Christian story has its own set of harmonies, its own set of tensions and resolutions, its own silence, its own rhythm. Truly Christian music, then, is schooled by these harmonies, tensions, and releases. MacMillan's music is no doubt jarring, but this, perhaps most of all, makes it Christian music. It does not try to over-realize itself or its 'Christian-ness' by grapping at cheap 'all-is-ok' motifs, rather, he holds his music open to the jarring story of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. And precisely in this jarring story is found the basis for a truly Christian aesthetic where Christian redemption may be witnessed to. MacMillan is a musician of the cross, in contrast to so many other "Christian" musicians who are musicians of glory i.e., musicians whose music is not crucified and raised by the Gospel, but rather pushed ahead to Easter by bypassing Good Friday and Holy Saturday. MacMillan's music is broken apart (quite litteraly) by the cross, and only because of this is it a fitting witness to the Gospel of God's severe love.