‘Transubstantiated into the musical…’ : a critical exegesis on metaphor and actuality in James MacMillan’s Veni Veni Emmanuel

Veni Veni Emmanuel was composed in 1991/92 and written to a commission from Christian Salvesen PLC for the percussionist Evelyn Glennie and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. It was first premiered in [1992] and has remained one of the composers’ most performed works. Although it is usually described as a percussion concerto, it is perhaps more properly to be thought of as a work for percussionist and orchestra, rather than as a concerto in the strictest sense. This ‘re-orientation’ will be explored further at the end of this article after consideration of the various structural thematic and harmonic components that make up the work and the compositional processes that created them.