John Butt (musician)

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John Butt

OBE FRSE FBA
Born (1960-11-17) 17 November 1960 (age 63)
Solihull, England
Alma mater King's College, Cambridge
Occupations
  • Choral conductor
  • concert organist
  • musicologist
Organizations
Awards Gramophone Award

John Butt OBE FRSE FBA (born 17 November 1960, [1] Solihull, England) is an English orchestral and choral conductor, organist, harpsichordist and scholar. He holds the Gardiner Chair of Music at the University of Glasgow and is music director of the Dunedin Consort with whom he has made award-winning recordings in historically informed performance. He is a prolific scholar, conductor and performer of works by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Contents

Education and career

Butt was educated at Solihull School on a music scholarship. In 1979 he began his undergraduate education at University of Cambridge, where he held the position of organ scholar at King's College from 1979 to 1982. His organ teachers at Cambridge included Peter Hurford and Gillian Weir. He received his PhD at Cambridge in 1987.

After graduation, he lectured at the University of Aberdeen and was a Fellow of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge. In 1989, he became university organist and assistant professor of music at the University of California, Berkeley; in 1992, he was promoted to associate professor, as well as director of the University Chamber Chorus. He prepared that choir for Gustav Leonhardt to conduct in Bach's Magnificat and the related cantata Meine Seel erhebt den Herren, BWV 10, at the 1992 Berkeley Festival and Exhibition; [2] Butt later said that he had come to know Leonhardt "fairly well" and that "I learned a lot when preparing choirs for him back in my California days." [3] In 1997, he gave what one critic calls "memorable readings" of Handel's organ concertos. [1] as guest organ soloist with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

In autumn of 1997, Butt returned to the University of Cambridge as University Lecturer, Director of Studies for Music at King's College, and Fellow of King's College. He also became the founding director of King's Voices mixed chorus. [4] Musicians that he inspired during this time include the organist Robert Quinney and harpsichordist and director Julian Perkins.

Since October 2001, Butt has been the Gardiner Chair of Music at the University of Glasgow; he also served as Head of the Music Department from 2001 to 2005. [5] Since 2003 he has conducted the Dunedin Consort, a professional ensemble in Edinburgh for performances in historically informed performance. At the end of the 2013/14 academic session, Butt was also appointed Interim Director of Music of the Glasgow University Chapel Choir, after James Grossmith left that post to become chorus master of the Royal Swedish Opera.

As a guest conductor, Butt has appeared with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the English Concert, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Irish Baroque Orchestra, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music Chamber Orchestra and Chorus, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Aurora Orchestra, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, the Halle, and orchestras at the Berkeley Early Music Festival and Göttingen International Handel Festival.

Publications

Butt has published numerous articles for scholarly publications [6] and for general-audience publications. [7] Books have included [6]

He co-edited the Cambridge Companion to Bach (1997) – for which he contributed two articles on Bach's metaphysics – was consultant editor for the Oxford Companion to Bach, and joint editor (together with Tim Carter) of the Cambridge History of Seventeenth Century Music (2005).

Discography

As a solo harpsichordist, organist, or clavichordist, Butt made eleven recordings for the Harmonia mundi label, of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Kuhnau, Johann Pachelbel, Georg Philipp Telemann, Henry Purcell, John Blow, Matthew Locke, Juan Bautista Cabanilles, Girolamo Frescobaldi, and Sir Edward Elgar. [10] In 2004, he recorded Bach's Pastorella for organ, BWV 590, for the Delphian label in Glasgow. [11] In July 2013, [12] using a harpsichord modeled on an original built by Michael Mietke, [13] Butt recorded Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier for the Linn label; it was released in November 2014. [12] [14]

As a continuo player, Butt has recorded with many ensembles, including the English Chamber Orchestra and American Bach Soloists. [15] In 1991–92, for Harmonia mundi, he and Baroque violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock recorded the Bach sonatas for violin and harpsichord, BWV 1014–19, 1021 and 1023. [15] In 2014, he recorded BWV 1014–19 again, this time with violinist Lucy Russell for the Linn label; [16] it was released in 2015.

Butt's first recording as a conductor, made in 1994 for the Centaur label, featured music of Orlando Gibbons sung by the U.C. Berkeley Chamber Choir with viol accompaniment; for the disc, he also recorded keyboard works of Gibbons on the organ. [17] Since 2005, Butt has conducted recordings of the Dunedin Consort and Players for the Linn label, many featuring reconstructions of a specific historical performance. [18] These include:

Awards and fellowships

In addition to awards for his books and recordings, Butt has won awards and fellowships including:

Personal life

John Butt and his wife Sally have five children [37] He is the nephew of a professional musician, [3] and son of the distinguished biochemist Wilfrid Butt [38] – who was, Butt says, "a keen amateur" [3] musician and was at one time a member of the chorus of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. When an interviewer for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment asked John Butt about his preferences, [39] he expressed enthusiasm for the practice of tai chi, the films of Alfred Hitchcock, [3] the symphonies of Anton Bruckner (adding, "I can’t understand why so many people find Bruckner boring"), and the In Search of Lost Time novels of Marcel Proust (the central character, he said, is "a bit of a weed in many respects, but what a complex, detailed and wonderfully ironic weed! No-one else captures so strikingly the paradoxes of consciousness and the little inconsistencies and delusions that we all try to hide from the world"). He also told the interviewer, "I feel that most of the things at which I am successful are only a matter of momentary luck!"

On 17 September 2014 he published a letter in The Herald supporting the "No" position in 2014 Scottish independence referendum, and arguing that independence would damage classical music. He argued that "Classical and contemporary music surely flourish best in a multi-cultural, international, environment, one that is extraordinarily well provided within the UK (and which would be even better if more Scots were to reclaim some of their ownership of it)," decried the "insidious synecdochal reductionism of the independence cause," and concluded, "Such a simplistic attitude suggests that the risks of looking inwards and losing the dynamism of Scotland's own cultures are very real once we begin to live behind the Tartan Curtain." [40]

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References

  1. 1 2 Robert Cummings. "John Butt – Biography – AllMusic". AllMusic . Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  2. ↑ "Review/Music - Heralded in Celebration, A Maturing Movement". The New York Times . 15 June 1992. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Speed Interview: John Butt – Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment". Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Archived from the original on 21 January 2015. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  4. ↑ "King's Voices". Kings.cam.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 16 January 2014. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  5. ↑ "University of Glasgow". Gla.ac.uk. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  6. 1 2 "University of Glasgow". Gla.ac.uk. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  7. ↑ "University of Glasgow". Gla.ac.uk. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  8. ↑ John Butt. "Bach Interpretation: Articulation Marks in Primary Sources of J. S. Bach". Scholarship.claremont.edu. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  9. ↑ "Research Grants & Prizes – The American Bach Society". Americanbachsociety.org. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  10. ↑ "John Butt (Harpsichord, Organ, conductor) – Short Biography". Bach Cantatas Website. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  11. ↑ "Organs in Glasgow – John Butt, John Kitchen – Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards – AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  12. 1 2 "Linn Records – J. S. Bach: Das wohltemperierte Klavier". Linnrecords.com. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  13. ↑ "Help us bring Bach's Harpsichord to Scotland : Dunedin Consort, Scotland's leading baroque ensemble". Dunedin Consort. Archived from the original on 28 March 2014. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  14. ↑ Gramophone (magazine), "Butt alone for Bach," Gramophone (magazine), May 2014, p.39
  15. 1 2 "John Butt – Bach's Instrumental Works – Discography". Bach Cantatas Website. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  16. ↑ "Dunedin Consort's John Butt goes solo". Heraldscotland.com. 3 December 2014. Retrieved 22 January 2016.
  17. ↑ "Anthems And Instrumental Works By Orlando Gibbons / Butt". Arkivmusic.com. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  18. ↑ "John Butt (artistic director)". Dunedin Consort. Archived from the original on 11 May 2008. Retrieved 21 January 2010.
  19. ↑ "Linn Records – Handel: Esther, First reconstructable version (Cannons), 1720". Linnrecords.com. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  20. ↑ "John Passion – J. S. Bach : Dunedin Consort, Scotland's leading baroque ensemble". Dunedin-consort.org.uk. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  21. ↑ "Six Brandenburg Concertos". Vimeo. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  22. ↑ "Linn Records – Dunedin Consort – J. S. Bach: Six Brandenburg Concertos – Gramophone". Linnrecords.com. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  23. ↑ "ICMA NOMINATION LIST 2014" (PDF). Icma-info.com. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  24. ↑ John Butt, liner notes to the Dunedin Consort recording of the Brandenburg Concertos, Linn Records CDK 430
  25. ↑ "Mozart's Requiem". Upbo.com. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  26. ↑ "Linn Records – Mozart: Requiem (Reconstruction of first performance)". Linnrecords.com. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  27. ↑ Gramophone (magazine), Recording of the Month Gramophone, May 2014, pp. 28–9
  28. ↑ "Choral – gramophone.co.uk". Gramophone . Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  29. ↑ Archived 27 November 2014 at the Wayback Machine
  30. ↑ "GRAMMY.com – The Official Site of Music's Biggest Night". The GRAMMYs. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  31. 1 2 "Dunedin Consort: Approaching Classical Music with an Inquisitive Spirit". Creativescotland.com. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  32. ↑ "Dunedin Consort's John Butt goes solo". Herald Scotland. 3 December 2014. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  33. ↑ "RMA Awards: Recipients of the Dent Medal (2007 and earlier)". Rma.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 21 September 2016. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  34. ↑ Archived 13 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  35. ↑ "John Butt awarded the Royal College of Organists Medal : Dunedin Consort, Scotland's leading baroque ensemble". Dunedin Consort. 16 March 2013. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  36. ↑ "No. 60367". The London Gazette (Supplement). 29 December 2012. p. 10.
  37. ↑ John Butt, Bach’s Dialogue with Modernity: Perspectives on the Passions, Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. x, ISBN   978-0-521-88356-6
  38. ↑ "Obituary: Wilfrid Butt". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  39. ↑ "John Butt: Speed Interview". Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Blog. 14 December 2010. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  40. ↑ "The BBC SSO will be better off in the ramshackle, multi-cultural, multi-national UK". Herald Scotland. 17 September 2014. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
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