As we start our second weekly post, I welcome new and recurring readers to the blog! As some of you may have guessed from last week’s hint, we are traveling from 18th century Europe to 21st century America. However, we will stick with the Classical genre to see what changes the genre has undergone over the course of nearly 250 years. This week, we will learn a bit about John Mackey, a contemporary classical composer, who excellently represents Classical music in the modern day. So grab your headphones and prepare to listen to the compositions of a living composer!

John Mackey was born October 1, 1973 in New Philadelphia, Ohio. Though Mackey’s parents were musicians, Mackey never took music lessons from them or formally learned how to play an instrument. Instead, his introduction to music came through his grandfather, who played clarinet, oboe, and flute in a local community band and owned a nearby music store. Wanting to instill the joys and passion of music in his grandson, Mackey’s grandfather taught him how to read music as well as use computer programs to compose music of his own. The first of these programs was the Music Construction Set for the Apple IIe and later for the Commodore 64. This basic and limited piece of software could only play three notes at a time, but it would inspire a lifetime love of music. Throughout the 1980’s, Mackey spent dozens of hours working with his arbitrary music software.

On his Osti Music blog in 2015, Mackey talks about the pieces he composed and painstakingly transposed throughout his early teen years on this software as well as on another called SidPlayer. Above is a video recording of what Mackey believes to be his earliest surviving piece. This piece, a Lacrimosa, was inspired by the award-winning Amadeus (1984), a film about Mozart’s life. You may recall our discussion on Mozart’s Lacrimosa from last week’s post. Mackey recounts being obsessed with this movie and describes how it motivated and inspired him. He tried to follow the sound and style of the piece in his own interpretation. Interestingly, the “clarinet” part in this composition was intended for Mackey’s grandfather to play. Though this piece may sound dreadful now, it would later lead to an artful career.

Mackey would pursue his passion for music in an undergraduate Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1995. He would then travel to New York City afterwards to receive his Masters in Music from Juilliard in 1997. From then on, Mackey narrowed his focus on composing for dance and for symphonic winds in the Classical genre. His compositions have been played around the world, from the Sydney Opera House to Carnegie Hall, and he has received numerous grants and awards for his innovative work. Some of his most notable songs include Aurora Awakes, Asphalt Cocktail, and Hymn to a Blue Hour.

One of my personal favorites of Mackey’s would have to be Sheltering Sky. Though one of his simplest and easiest to perform, this composition has beautiful swells of emotion throughout that make it both memorable and breathtaking. The calming suspensions with soft oboe and trumpet memories give the piece the ethereal and uplifting feelings that one gets upon looking into the sky at the clouds. Another piece that resonates with me is Foundry.  Meant to sound like men working in a foundry, a metal casting factory, the song uses lots of unique percussion instruments such as “four piles of metal” and “clangs”. As with many of his songs, including Liminal and Wine-Dark Sea, percussion is greatly showcased and full of many challenging and driving parts. The song also features large brass-filled melodies, typical of most of Mackey’s compositions. In Foundry, the brass-filled melodies constantly swell to represent the sweltering heat and slow movement in the infernal foundry.

I hope you enjoyed learning about a living composer this week. Sometimes it can seem difficult to connect with a composer and their work when they aren’t alive, but with Mackey, you can visit his website, Osti Music, or even support his SoundCloud account. It can be exciting to wait for his next release and it’s always amazing to hear his interpretations of his compositions instead of a pianist or conductor’s interpretation hundreds of years down the road. If you would like to hear more from Mackey, I encourage you to listen to his most recent piece, The Night Garden. It was commissioned by The Senzoku Wind Symphony and first premiered on December 3, 2017. It differs from his more recent music and strikes a new chord (pun intended).

Thanks for reading this post! Next week, we will venture into another genre that comes from the heart of New Orleans and Harlem. Come back next week for more Compositions on Composers!

Image and Information Credits:

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Figure 2: Video 1

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Source 1: Site 1