| John Rutter | |
|---|---|
| Born | John Milford Rutter September 24, 1945 London |
| Nationality | United Kingdom |
| Alma mater | Clare College, Cambridge |
| Occupation | Composer, conductor |
| Known for | Founded the Cambridge Singers, prolific composer |
| Awards | National Patron of Delta Omicron (1985); Commander of the Order of the British Empire |
John Milford Rutter CBE (born 24 September 1945) is a British composer, conductor, editor, arranger and record producer, mainly of choral music.
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Born in London, Rutter was educated at Highgate School, where a fellow pupil was John Tavener.[1] He read music at Clare College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the choir. He served as director of music at Clare College from 1975 to 1979 and led the choir to international prominence.
In 1974, Rutter visited the United States at the invitation of choral musician Melvin (Mel) Olson and conducted the premiere of his cantata "Gloria" in Omaha, Nebraska, in the Witherspoon Hall of Joslyn Art Museum. The composition, commissioned by Olson's Voices of Mel Olson chorale, has become a much-performed favourite over the years.
In 1981 Rutter founded his own choir, the Cambridge Singers, which he conducts and with which he has made many recordings of sacred choral repertoire (including his own works), particularly under his own label Collegium Records. He resides at Duxford in Cambridgeshire and frequently conducts many choirs and orchestras around the world.
In 1980 he was made an honorary Fellow of Westminster Choir College, Princeton, and in 1988 a Fellow of the Guild of Church Musicians. In 1996 the Archbishop of Canterbury conferred a Lambeth Doctorate of Music upon him in recognition of his contribution to church music. In 2008, he was made an honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple while playing a significant role in the 2008 Temple Festival.
From 1985 to 1992 Rutter suffered severely from myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME; or Chronic fatigue syndrome), which restricted his output; after 1985 he stopped writing music on commission, as he was unable to guarantee meeting deadlines.[2]
Rutter also works as an arranger and editor, most notably (in his youth) of the extraordinarily successful Carols for Choirs anthology series in collaboration with Sir David Willcocks.
He was inducted as a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity in 1985.[3][4]
Rutter's compositions are chiefly choral, and include Christmas carols, anthems and extended works such as a Gloria, a Magnificat, and a Requiem.
The world premiere of Rutter's Requiem (1985), and of his authoritative edition of Faure's Requiem, took place with the Fox Valley Festival Chorus, in Illinois. In 2002 his setting of Psalm 150, commissioned for the Queen's Golden Jubilee, was performed at the Jubilee thanksgiving service in St Paul's Cathedral, London. Similarly, he was commissioned to write a new anthem, "This is the day which the Lord hath made" for the Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in 2011, performed at Westminster Abbey during the service.[5]
He has also written an opera for young people called Bang!
Rutter's work is published principally by Oxford University Press in England and by Hinshaw Music in the US. He has been recorded by many choirs, but conducts his own recordings principally on his Collegium label.
Rutter's music is eclectic, showing the influences of the French and English choral traditions of the early 20th century, as well as of light music and American classic songwriting. Almost every choral anthem and hymn that he writes, in addition to the standard piano/organ accompaniment, has a subsequent orchestral accompaniment as well, utilizing various different instrumentations, such as strings only, strings and woodwinds, or full orchestra with brass and percussion, among others.
Despite composing and conducting much religious music, Rutter told the US television program 60 Minutes in 2003 that he was not particularly a religious man, yet still deeply spiritual and inspired by the spirituality of sacred verses and prayers.[6] The 60 Minutes program, which aired a week before Christmas 2003, focused on Rutter's popularity with choral groups in the United States, Britain and other parts of the world, and on his composition, Mass of the Children, composed after the sudden death of his son Christopher while a student at Clare College, Cambridge (where Rutter himself had studied).
In a 2009 interview, Rutter discussed his understanding of "genius" and its unique ability to transform lives - whether that genius is communicated in the form of music or other mediums. He likened the purity of music to that of mathematics, and even connected the two with a reference to the discoveries of the early Greeks that frequencies of harmonic pitches are related by whole-number ratios.
Rutter's music is very popular, particularly in the USA (NBC's Today Show called him "the world's greatest living composer and conductor of choral music"). In the UK it receives a more mixed reception: while one conservative British composer, David Arditti, does not regard him as a sufficiently "serious" composer,[7] others hold him in high regard, as illustrated by the following quotation from a review in the London Evening Standard (25/09/2005): "For the infectiousness of his melodic invention and consummate craftsmanship, Rutter has few peers."
Most of these works are arrangements.
Most of these works are original compositions, including new musical settings of standard texts, whilst others are arrangements of traditional hymns.
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