I spent the past few hours listening to and reading the score for the entirety of James MacMillan’s “Triduum”. It is not an easy work. No part of it is traditionally “beautiful”. The few moments which come close to that are immediately shattered by harsh blasts of sound. Dissonance reigns. That is fitting for the subject matter of the work. It is a meditation on the span from Maundy Thursday through Holy Saturday. Those three days of Christian history are the days when it seemed Jesus was losing — seemed God was losing. And so the work is difficult.

I am glad to have done the work of sitting down and having listened to it and read its score. I learned quite a bit musically from the experience. I was challenged by the work itself. “Challenged” is the right word. At one point I thought I could not write this piece. It is not only that I would not want to — true though that is, at least at this juncture — but that I could not even if I did want to. More than that, though: listening to it was hard work. I would not think of trying to play it for my daughters, and Jaimie might appreciate it with some effort but would not, I think, “like it”. This is fair. I am not sure the piece is intended to be “liked”. It is meant to be difficult.

In that it is like many works of the 20th century repetoir (albeit with a better motivation than much of that music). I do not listen to this kind of music for “fun” exactly, but to learn, to grow, and yes to be challenged. Good art can be challenging; the best art always challenges us, though not always in the same ways. Some books, some music, some poetry, is difficult merely for the sake of being difficult, and I have little positive to say about those works. Some art, though, is difficult because its subject matter demands it. Speaking truthfully — in verse or prose or harmonic structure — of the Son of God undergoing trial, crucifixion, death, and long lonely day in the tomb: this requires hard material to go with the hard matter at hand.

Not every work ought to be difficult. But some should.