Musicon / MacMillan / James MacMillan: Dawkins is a crap philosopher
-James MacMillan: Dawkins is a crap philosopher
His house, situated in a solidly middle-class suburb of Glasgow, exudes a cosy, family-centred domesticity. It seems emphatically ordinary – until we walk down the corridor to the dining-room for a pasta lunch, when I notice every single one of the small paintings on the wall has a religious theme. …
Ten years ago he gave a speech in which he was reported as saying that “Glasgow is Belfast without the bullets”. “You know I never said that”, he says without even a trace of heat. “It was part of a lecture called ‘Scotland’s shame: Anti-Catholicism as a barrier to genuine pluralism’, which I think that was actually quite mild”.
Have things improved in the decade since he gave the speech? “Yes, in the sense that these things can now be discussed. I think the Scottish problem has proved to be part of a global prejudice against the church. Someone said recently that “anti-Catholicism is the new anti-Semitism of the liberal intellectual”.
What does he think about Richard Dawkins’ campaigning for atheism? “He’s a great scientist but a c–p philosopher. He’s a great deal to contribute in his field, but he’s become a kind of street fighter, who doesn’t think in a very subtle way.”
The real puzzle is how a man so wedded to “traditional wisdom”, as he puts it, can still see himself as a modern. I tell him that to my ears the music seems more and more traditional in its embrace of tonality.
“I absolutely disagree,” he says mildly. “What I’m trying to find is the communicative core in music, and that can be done just as well in modernist noises as in common chords. And just because I’m a religious composer doesn’t mean the conflict and stress you get in modernism isn’t relevant, in fact it’s the reverse. For me religious faith is rooted in the mess of real life, and my music has to be true to that experience.”
From The Telegraph; excerpts, edited by Musicon
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