JOHN RUTTER is one of the most successful composers of sacred
choral music this country has ever known. His name is almost
synomous with the genre in its contemporary form.
He is well known for singable settings of the Gloria and
Magnificat, and for his Requiem, and Mass of the
Children (which he conducted last month, in Carnegie Hall, New
York). And, of course, he composed "This is the Day", the anthem
for the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
But he is best known for his Christmas carols, and carol
arrangements - 100 or more at the last count. These include:
"Donkey Carol", "Carol of the Magi", "Mary's Lullaby", and "The
Colours of Christmas".
"For the infectiousness of his melodic invention and consummate
craftmanship, Rutter has few peers," the London Evening
Standard wrote recently. But, for all this, I found him
modest, even shy.
"In a sense, I'm a writer of song, or song music, even before
I'm a composer," Rutter says. "I love writing tunes - not all, but
much of, the time. Atonality [music without a key, often dissonant]
is something we all had a go at in the 1960s and '70s.
"You can't bury your head in the sand: this is music that
matters. Webern and his musical complexity were, in part at least,
the product of the vexed social conditions of Austro-Germany in the
1910s, '20s, and '30s, and it's important to remember that. I take
my hat off to the explorers who've stuck with it - composers who
are discovering new worlds, and voyaging through realms of
uncharted territory."
He says that he has kept in touch with "the cutting edge of
music - Bartók, Berio, works like Stockhausen's Gesang der
Jünglinge, Berio, some of Penderecki". And he caught the
recent Pierre Boulez concert at the Royal Festival Hall. "Boulez's
music is lovely, delicate, exquisite - much more in touch with
Debussy and Ravel than I'd realised," he says.
"But that's just not what I'm good at. You have to be happy with
the gifts you've been given - not chase after ones you haven't been
given. Exploring the darker realms of music is not me. I like to
cheer people up."
THE other significant work that Rutter introduced his Carnegie
Hall audience to was Ralph Vaughan Williams's "Hodie"
(from A Christmas Cantata), composed in 1953-54. "It's an
extraordinary piece," he says. "Vaughan Williams was 81 when he
wrote it, and by that time he felt free just to write whatever he
wanted to write. The music is often beautiful, touching, evocative;
but his 'March of the Three Kings' is quite dotty and odd: bold,
wacky, and wonderful."
Rutter's enthusiasm is infectious. It is visible at the
countless choral-singing events he runs, on both sides of the
Atlantic, in which he conducts. He is an educator par
excellence; and a vitaliser and galvaniser of others.
"It was about 20 years ago that I started doing 'Come and Sing'
days. The idea is that absolutely anyone is welcome. There's no
kind of audition, or selection process. We simply do a day's
singing together, and strive to perform better by the end of the
day than we did at the start. I find that work really satisfying.
It complements the sessions I have with professionals."
His inspiration for this was Sir David Willcocks, then Director
of Music at King's College, Cambridge. "At the same time as he was
insisting on perfection from his boys and men of King's College,
Cambridge, choir, achieving standards virtually no one else could
touch, David would do a singing session for amateurs in, say,
Nether Wallop. Groups or choirs would approach and ask him, and, if
he had a free day in his diary, he would invariably say yes."
Rutter was assisting Willcocks at the time, collaborating on the
early stages of their series Carols for Choirs. "I was
always slightly surprised, and fascinated, to see this side of
him," he says. "He simply didn't mind if he was working with
limited or amateur resources. David was, and still is, wonderfully
open to all kinds of music. On occasions, we would round off
concerts with 'Walking in the Air', from Howard Blake's The
Snowman. Brilliant!
"David was my mentor, and I've tried, so far as I can, to follow
in his footsteps, although nobody can hold a candle to him. I
absolutely don't mind, at a "Come and Sing" day, or perhaps a
charity event, if it's not note-perfect or perfectly tuned, or even
not a good performance at the end of the day, so long as the
participants go away feeling that they have done a bit better than
they previously believed they could."
RUTTER and his wife, JoAnne, live just outside Cambridge, in a
village he describes as "the Bournemouth of the Fens". But his
enthusiasm for these events means that, often, "I find myself
jumping in the car on Saturdays, and heading to Scarborough, or
Shrewsbury, or the Temple Church in London, or some of the lovely
churches of Northamptonshire. I do a dozen 'Come and Sing' days
each year; so over two decades that amounts to quite a lot."
Rutter thrives on the human exchange that these sessions
engender. "On occasion, somebody will come up afterwards and say:
'That was the best experience I've had for ages.' So the return is
that they make me feel a whole heap better, too. They go back to
their little church choir hopefully recharged, and I go home to
Cambridge, recharged as well."
A significant breakthrough, he says, "was getting my publishers
on board. They initially needed some convincing. But I told them
this was a service to the community, and making what they publish
more or less freely available for events such as these would bring
benefits in the long run. OUP's support and co-operation - their
foresightedness - has contributed hugely to the success of these
gatherings."
RUTTER caught the music bug, thanks to the inspiration of
others, initially at Highgate Junior School: "We were directed by
Martindale Sidwell, a wonderful man and excellent musician who was
organist of Hampstead Parish Church. He was peppery and difficult,
but basically a warm-hearted man, who taught us an immense
amount.
"Our Director of Music at Highgate [Senior] School was Edward
Chapman, who had been taught by Charles Wood and examined by
Stanford. He was a conservative composer, but a very fine
craftsman, and was incredibly encouraging and supportive.
"Under him, we sang a slightly scaled-down version of cathedral
repertoire in Highgate's Victorian red-brick school chapel. That
meant Sunday services as well, because pupils were mostly boarders
then [though he was not]. . .
"We sang Tallis and Byrd, plainsong, Wesley, Stanford, and so on
- in fact, a wide range of music. Minor public-school chapels
weren't, by and large, doing that kind of stuff in those days. I
was introduced to a wide repertoire, first-hand, in my teens, and
I've always been grateful for that.
"Being a day boy living in London also meant that I could haunt
the cheaper seats at Covent Garden and the Royal Festival Hall.
John Tavener [Rutter's friend from Highgate] and I were always
asking questions - buttonholing the percussionist or
double-bassoonist and demanding to know how everything works."
From the beginning, he was captured by melody. "I've always
enjoyed music with a tune you could whistle. In the '60s, the
Beatles and the Rolling Stones meant a great deal to me, and they
both had that gift."
Who has it now? "Today, I think of wonderfully versatile
composers like Richard Rodney Bennett - a through-and-through
classical musician who can produce a full-blooded percussion
concerto, but then turn his hand to compose gloriously tuneful,
memorable film music, knock off a song for Cleo Laine, accompany
with aplomb a complete evening of cabaret, and then pen a series of
enchanting choral gems for groups like the King's Singers."
e is often asked where he gets his ideas from. "The honest
answer is: I don't know. Where the music comes from is a mystery.
I'm sure many other composers would say the same. The truth is, you
have to hack away determinedly, a bit like a sculptor chiselling
his stone. Hopefully, it comes in the end.
"Julian Lloyd Webber has been asking me for about 12 years for a
cello concerto - and he's still waiting."
This is the Day by John Rutter's ensemble, the Cambridge
Singers, is available on his own Collegium label:
www.collegium.co.uk.