Scottish composer James MacMillan will conduct choirs and an orchestra in the Twin Cities

Sir James MacMillan called it “quite a cloak and dagger meeting at Westminster Abbey.” Going in, the composer wasn’t certain what these representatives from Buckingham Palace wanted to discuss with him, but it quickly became clear: MacMillan was asked to compose a piece to be sung at Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral.

Mind you, this was in 2011, but her majesty’s retinue was known for being well-prepared.

“I was presented with a text that was one of the queen’s favorites, a biblical extract, ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?’” MacMillan said a fortnight ago from his home in Scotland’s North Ayrshire region.

“So I wrote it quickly,” he continued. “Who knows with old ladies? You never know when they’re going to be taken from us. And it went straight into a drawer for the next 11 years. And brought out when she died and rehearsals began.

“It was such a weird experience. I didn’t actually attend the [2022] funeral. My wife broke her foot, so I stayed behind in Scotland and watched it on television. With, it turned out, 4 billion others [according to some estimates]. I’ve certainly never had an audience like that before.”

That piece will be part of a two-week festival of MacMillan’s music being presented by the Minnesota Orchestra and VocalEssence. He’ll conduct the orchestra in two of his own works and three pieces by others this weekend, then lead an April 4 concert at the Cathedral of St. Paul with seven local church choirs that includes that anthem for the queen and seven other sacred works, including a premiere.

The festival concludes April 6 at St. Paul’s Ordway Concert Hall, where two VocalEssence choirs will be conducted by MacMillan and VocalEssence founder and artistic director Philip Brunelle.

“Sir James is one of the most unique voices for choral music of our time,” Brunelle said last week. “His religious faith, his social conscience, and his use of silence are part of what makes his music so vital and magnificent.”

MacMillan’s Catholic faith is a big part of his music, but he believes that spirituality has inspired most of the great composers of the past 100 years.

“At first, I was wary of writing music that was too religious,” he said in a mellifluous Scottish brogue. “But when you think about the 20th and now the 21st century, music has maintained links with this idea of the search for the sacred.”

He listed such composers as Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage, Olivier Messiaen, Francis Poulenc and Arvo Pärt.

“You could say that the 20th century, modernity in general, has been infused with a spirituality,” MacMillan said. “And lovers of music will talk about it as the most spiritual of the arts.”

So does MacMillan ever feel divine inspiration when composing?

“Well, I’m prepared for external inspirations,” he said. “I think, as a religious composer, I’m certainly aware that there’s an umbilical link between what we do as musicians and composers and a sense of the sacred, a sense of the spiritual.”

The final concert at the Ordway Concert Hall will feature choirs from VocalEssence performing, among other works, MacMillan’s “Seven Last Words From the Cross.”

“My very first visit to Minneapolis was for the American premiere of that piece, way back in the mid-’90s,” the composer said. “I’ve been back once since. My piano concerto was premiered there with Jean-Yves Thibaudet in 2011, with Osmo Vänskä conducting the Minnesota Orchestra. So this is my third trip.”

And, unlike that meeting with the queen’s people, he’s allowed to talk about it.

“I was told not to tell anyone, apart from my wife and children,” he said of the royal family’s commission. “I didn’t mind telling my children, because anything I said would go in one ear and out the other anyway.”

With the Minnesota Orchestra: 8 p.m. Fri., 7 p.m. Sat.; Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Mpls., $20-$84, 612-371-5656 or minnesotaorchestra.org.

With seven Twin Cities church choirs: 7:30 p.m. April 4, Cathedral of St. Paul, 239 Selby Av., St. Paul, free, vocalessence.org.

With VocalEssence: 4 p.m. April 6, Ordway Concert Hall, 345 Washington St., St. Paul, $17-$46, 651-224-4222 or ordway.org.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.