CJ Replay: The Music of John Rutter

     “In the past few years, John Rutter’s choral music has become increasingly popular in church, community, and school organizations. Because of this popularity, it has become necessary not only to analyze the style of Rutter’s music, but also to grasp the philosophy of composition from which his style emanates. With these factors in mind, the responsible conductor can begin to formulate appropriate performance practices that will reflect the nature and character of Rutter’s music.”
     “According to Rutter, the mainstream of musical life in the twentieth century might well be established as the American fusion af popular and fine-arts musical traditions. The composer views the stylistic conflict as parallel to the conflicting traditions which existed at the turn of the sixteenth century when the European tradition of the late Middle Ages came to an impasse, lost momentum, and fell into an overly complex, manneristic style which died. The sixteenth century, a century of dance, witnessed a rejuvenation of serious composition by the injection of new life from the willsprings of popular art into the European mainstream.”

     “It is Rutter’s contention that the mainstream of twentieth-century musical composition lies somewhere in the United States because of the extraordinary fusions that took place here: the fusion of European and African traditions with the ineteenth-century tradition of missionary music which resulted in blues and jazz and the fusion of that style with vaudeville and Viennese operetta which culminated in the Broadway musical. It should be noted that Rutter sees this fusion as a real synthesis of traditions: the great Classical legacy of technical expertise, procedures, and ways of producing extended structures, with the vitality of popular music.”

 

(from the Choral Journal article “The Music of John Rutter: Style and Performance Considerations,” by Robert M. McBain)