Position: Gardiner Chair
Biography: John Butt was born in 1960 (in Solihull, West Midlands) and was educated (on a music scholarship) at Solihull School. As an undergraduate at Cambridge University, he held the office of organ scholar at King's College. Continuing as a graduate student, he studied the music of Bach, surveying articulation markings in autograph manuscripts and receiving his PhD in 1987. He was subsequently a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen and a Fellow of Magdalene College Cambridge, joining the faculty at UC Berkeley in 1989 as University Organist and Assistant Professor in Music (Associate Professor in 1992). In Autumn 1997 he returned to Cambridge as a University Lecturer and Fellow of King's College, and in October 2001 he became the Gardiner Chair of Music at the University of Glasgow, and Head of the Music Department (2001-05).
His books have been published by Cambridge University Press: his study of articulation, Bach Interpretation (1990), a handbook on Bach’s Mass in B Minor (1991), Music Education and the Art of Performance in the German Baroque (1994). Playing with History (2002) marked a new tack, examining the broad culture of historically informed performance and attempting to explain and justify it as a contemporary phenomenon. He is also editor of (and contributor to) the Cambridge Companion to Bach (1997), consultant editor for the Oxford Companion to Bach, and joint editor (together with Tim Carter) of the Cambridge History of Seventeenth Century Music (2005). His recent research has ranged from aspects of the ontology of music in the seventeenth century to considerations of the influence of plainchant and Roman Catholic culture in the music of Elgar. His book on Bach’s Passions, Bach’s Dialogue with Modernity, will be published in late 2009.
John Butt’s conducting engagements with the Dunedin Consort (2003-) have included major Baroque repertory and several new commissions. His recording of Messiah in its first performed version (Dublin, 1742) was released by Linn records in 2006 and received the ClassicFM/Gramophone award in the Baroque Vocal Category in 2007 and the MIDEM award for Baroque Music in 2008. Linn released his recording of Bach's Matthew Passion in March 2008 (which was ClassicFM Magazine’s Recording of the month in April 2008), and Handel’s Acis and Galatea in November 2008 (which was Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice and Recording of the Month in January 2009). He will be recording Bach’s Mass in B Minor with the Dunedin Consort in September 2009.
John Butt continues to be active as a solo organist and harpsichordist, performing across the world. Eleven recordings on organ, harpsichord and clavichord have been released by Harmonia Mundi. These also include (together with violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock) Bach's sonatas for violin and obbligato harpsichord. His most recent organ recordings are of the Bach organ toccatas and Schübler Chorales and Elgar's complete organ music. He has been guest conductor with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, San Francisco, the Göttingen Handel Festspiele, and the RSAMD Chamber Orchestra and Chorus. He conducted a newly discovered Scarlatti opera at the 1996 Berkeley Festival. As an organist and harpsichordist he has performed throughout the UK and the USA and also in Germany, including concertos with St Paul’s Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque and the San Francisco Symphony. BBC broadcasts since 2000 include a programme on Bach's Weimar organ music from the chapel at Weimar and a programme of Handel and Mozart from the University of Glasgow Chapel.
In 2003 he was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and received the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association. That year his book, Playing with History, was shortlisted for the British Academy's annual Book Prize. In 2006 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy and began a two-year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for his research on Bach's Passions.
Publications and other output
- Publications
- Books (monographs)
- Bach Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 1990)
- Bach-Mass in B Minor, Cambridge Music Handbooks (Cambridge University Press. 1991)
- Music Education and the Art of Performance in the German Baroque (Cambridge University Press, 1994)
- Playing with History - the historical approach to musical performance (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
- Books (edited)
- Cambridge Companion to Bach (commissioning editor and contributing author, 1997)
- Oxford Companion to Bach, consultant editor with Malcolm Boyd (Oxford, 1999)
- Cambridge History of Seventeenth Century Music, editor, with Tim Carter (Cambridge, 2005)
- Articles
- 'In Search of Bach the Organist', (with Peter le Huray) in Bach, Handel, Scarlatti Tercentenary Essays, ed. P. Williams (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 185-206
- 'Bach's Organ Sonatas-compilation and recomposition', Organ Yearbook (1988; publ. 1990)
- 'Bach's Mass in B Minor: Considerations of its early performance and use', Journal of Musicology (1991), pp. 109-23
- 'Improvised vocal ornamentation and German Baroque compositional theory - An approach to "Historical" performance practice', Journal of the Royal Musical Association (1991), pp. 41-62
- 'J.S. Bach and G.F. Kauffmann: reflections on Bach's later style', Bach Studies, vol. 2, ed. D. Melamed (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 47-61
- 'Purcell's Organ Music: a Tercentenary Tribute', Journal of the Royal College of Organists (London, 1995)
- Chapter on 'Germany and the Netherlands', in Keyboard Music before 1700, Schirmer studies in musical genres and repertories, ed. Alexander Silbiger (New York, 1995), pp. 147-234
- 'Acting up a text: the performance of scholarship and the scholarship of performance', review article of Text and Act, by Richard Taruskin, Early Music (May issue, 1996)
- 'Introduction', Cambridge Companion to Bach, ed. J. Butt (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 1-6
- 'Bach's Metaphysics of Music', Cambridge Companion to Bach, ed. J. Butt (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 46-59
- '"A mind unconscious that it is calculating"' Bach's creative character and the rationalist philosophy of Wolff, Leibniz and Spinoza', Cambridge Companion to Bach, ed. J. Butt (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 60-71
- 'Germany - education and apprenticeship', in The Cambridge Companion to Handel', ed., D. Burrows (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 11-23
- 'Bach's vocal scoring: what can it mean?', Early Music, xxvi (1998), pp. 99-107
- Consultant editor and contributor (36 articles) to Oxford Companion to Bach, ed. M. Boyd (Oxford, 1999)
- 'Bach Recordings 1980-1995, a mirror of historical performance', Bach Perspectives, IV, ed. D. Schulenberg (Nebraska, 1999)
- 'Performance on paper; rewriting the stories of notational progress', Actualizing Absence, interdisciplinary essays in performance studies, ed. A. Richards and M. Franko (Hanover, NH, 2000), pp. 137-55
- Revisions to several articles for New Grove (2001 - including 'Pachelbel'), new article: 'Authenticity'
- 'Choral music', The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 213-36
- 'Choral culture and the regeneration of the organ', Ibid., ed. Samson, pp. 522-43
- 'Towards a genealogy of the keyboard concerto', The Keyboard in Baroque Europe, ed. Christopher Hogwood (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 93-110
- Preface to Bach, by Martin Geck, trans. A. Bell, Haus Press (London, 2003), pp. vii-xii
- 'Germany and the Netherlands', Keyboard Music Before 1700 Routledge Studies in Musical Genres, ed. A. Silbiger (New York and London, 2004), pp. 147-234 2nd, revised edition of Keyboard Music, ed. Silbiger (1995)
- 'Bach e Händel: differenze entro una comune cultural dell'invenzione musicale'. Einaudi Enciclopedia della musica Volume quarto - Storia della musica europea, ed. J.-J. Nattiez (Turin, 2004), pp. 528-51 'Roman Catholicism and being musically English: Elgar's church and organ music', Cambridge Companion to Elgar, ed. D. Grimley and J. Rushton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 106-119
- 'Historische Aufführungspraxis und postmoderne Befindlichkeit', Basler Jahrbuch für Historische Musikpraxis, xxvii 2003 (Basel, 2004), pp.11-16
- 'Bach in 2000', Bach Studies from Dublin - Selected papers resented at the Ninth Biennial Conference on Baroque Music, held at Trinity College Dublin, July 2000, ed. Anne Leahy and Yo Tomita (Dublin, 2004), pp.191-204
- 'Figuring out Bach', Notis musycall - Essays on Music and Scottish Culture in Honour of Kenneth Elliott, ed. G. Munro, S. Campbell, G-M Hair, M.A. Mackay, E. Moohan and G. Hair (Glasgow, 2005), pp. 211-19
- 'Preface', and 'The 17th-Century Musical Work', Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music, ed. T. Carter and J. Butt (Cambridge, 2005), pp. xv-xxvii, 27-54
- 'Historical instruments and the embodiment of music', Music of the past ' instruments and imagination ' Proceedings of the harmoniques International Congress, Lausanne 2004, ed. M. Latcham (Bern, 2006), pp. 9-16
- ‘The Postmodern Mindset, Musicology and the Future of Bach Scholarship’, Understanding Bach, I, pp. 9-18 (Internet Journal of Bach Network UK, 2006)
- Bachs Klavier- und Orgelwerke - Das Handbuch, ed. Siegbert Rampe - (Laaber, 2008), vol. 2: articles on: ‘Choralpartiten’, 494-510, ‘Clavier Übung III’, 906-29, ‘Canonische Veränderungen’, 949-62, ‘Schübler-Choräle’, 996-1107.
- ‘Bach and the Textures of Time’, The Century of Bach and Mozart – Perspectives on Historiography, Composition, Theory, and Performance, In Honor of Christoph Wolff, ed. Sean Gallagher and Thomas Forrest Kelly (Cambridge Mass., 2008), pp. 111-20
- ‘Classical Music and the Subject of Modernity’, Proceedings of the British Academy 154 (2008), 425-48
- Books (monographs)
- Projects in Progress
- Bach’s Dialogue with Modernity: Perspectives on the Passions (supported by a two-year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, to be published by Cambridge University Press, 2009)
- Reviews and Notes
- Over forty reviews of books and music for Country Life, Early Music, Early Music History, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Music and Letters, Music Library Association NOTES, Musical Times, The New Republic, Piano and Keyboard, The Times Literary Supplement, Early Keyboard Journal
- Numerous CD reviews for Gramophone, Early Music, Early Music Review
- Author of extended Guardian article on Bach, for the BBC Radio 3 Bach marathon, December 2005
- Sleeve notes and concert programme notes for Academy of Ancient Music, Aldeburgh Festival, Berkeley Festival, Britten Sinfonia, Carmel Bach Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra (London), Andras Schiff's 2000 Bach series, Monteverdi Choir, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Angela Hewitt’s 2009 recording of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier
- Editorial work/Professional Committees etc
- Commissioning editor (with Laurence Dreyfus) for the series Cambridge Studies in the Performance and Reception of Music (formerly, Cambridge Musical Texts and Monographs) 1994 -
- Editorial Board of The Journal of the American Musicological Society, 1999 - 2003
- Advisory Board of Eighteenth-Century Music, 2003 -
- Advisory Board of The Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 2003 - 2006
- Council Member, Royal Musical Association, 2004 - 7
- Advisory Board of CHARM (Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music), 2004 - 8
- Member of AHRC Peer Review College, 2004 - 7
- Member of RAE 2008, Sub-Panel 67, 2005 - 8
- Member of The American Musicological Society - Annual Conference Programme committee, 2005
- Member of Advisory Council for Institute of Musical Research (University of London), 2006 -
- British Academy awards in music, 2007-
- Editorial Board, Understanding Bach, 2005-
- Editorial Board, Scottish Music Review, 2007- (editor of first issue)
- Numerous lectures and interviews for the BBC (relayed from San Francisco 1994-7, from London, Cambridge or Glasgow 1997-) - including 3 short papers on the history of western music ('The Unfinished Symphony'), 31 December 1999, contributions to the Sunday Bach programmes, 2000, and contribution to 'The English Cadence' (2002)); several interviews on Radio 3’s ‘In Tune’, 'The Choir' and on Radio Scotland
- Performances include:
- Recital from the organ in the Schosskirche, Altenburg, Germany (including interview with Joshua Rifkin, 2000)
- Concert of organ concertos and sonatas by Handel and Mozart (with EnsemblePtarmigan) from Glasgow University Chapel (2003)
- Recordings as Conductor
- Chorus Director of UC Chamber Chorus in recordings by Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas McGegan, Handel’s Theodora and Judas Maccabaeus with Harmonia Mundi, 1992-95
- Gibbons, anthems, with UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus, Centaur, conductor and solo organ, 1997
- Handel’s Messiah (Dublin version, 1742), Dunedin Consort and Players, Linn Records (November, 2006)
- Bach’s Matthew Passion (Bach’s final performing version c. 1742), Dunedin Consort and Players, Linn Records (March, 2008)
- Handel’s Acis and Galatea (first, Cannons, version 1718), Dunedin Consort and Players, Linn Records (November, 2008)
- Solo Recordings (Organ and Harpsichord; most involving substantial scholarly preparation)
- Pachelbel - Hexachordum Apollinis; two chaconnes; organ - Harmonia Mundi France, 1990
- Bach - Trio sonatas for organ - Harmonia Mundi France, 1992
- Cabanilles - Organ music - Harmonia Mundi France, 1992
- Solo harpsichord (with violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock) in Bach's complete harpsichord/violin sonatas (2 CDs), Harmonia Mundi France, 1993
- Kuhnau - solo harpsichord sonatas, Frische Clavier Früchte, Harmonia Mundi France, 1993
- Purcell - Complete Organ Music and Works by Locke and Blow, Harmonia Mundi France, 1994
- Kuhnau, Biblische Historien, played on organ, clavichord and harpsichord, Harmonia Mundi France, 1995
- Frescobaldi, Capricci, Harmonia Mundi France, 1996
- Recital, 2 July 1995 at St. Machar's Cathedral, Aberdeen (Bach, Liszt, Brahms, Dupré and Messiaen), released by University of Aberdeen on CD, 1997
- Telemann, Fantasies for Harpsichord (on instruments in the Russell Collection, Edinburgh), Harmonia Mundi France, 1999
- J.S. Bach - Four Toccatas and Fugues; Schübler Chorales - (Recorded on the Organ of Trinity College, Cambridge) Harmonia Mundi France, 2000
- Edward Elgar - Complete Organ Music, (Recorded on the Organ of King's College Cambridge), Harmonia Mundi France, 2002
- Organs of Glasgow (with John Kitchen), Delphian (2004)
- Recordings as Keyboard Soloist, Continuo etc
- Re-released recordings, originally from 1980-2:
- EMI, Duruflé, Fauré Requiems (King’s College Choir/Ledger); solo organ parts
- ASV, Gibbons church music (King’s College Choir/Ledger); organ solos
- Session Producer for American Bach Soloists recording of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, conducted by Jeffrey Thomas, Koch International
- Harpsichord 1, in Bach’s concerto for four harpsichords, with American Bach Soloists, Jeffrey Thomas, Koch International
- Harpsichord solo, in Bach’s Brandenburg concerto V, with American Bach Soloists, Jeffrey Thomas (recorded 1995, to be released 2007)
- 1989-1997 - About 15 recordings playing harpsichord and organ continuo, mainly with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and American Bach Soloists
- Re-released recordings, originally from 1980-2:
- Fellowships, Awards, Honours, etc
- 1979-82 A.H. Mann Organ Studentship, King's College, Cambridge
- 1980 John Stewart of Rannoch Scholarship in Sacred Music, Cambridge University
- 1983 Finalist in the London Lloyd-Webber Memorial Organ Competition
- 1984 Finalist in the Leipzig Bach Organ Competition
- 1992 W. H. Scheide Award from the American Bach Society for book, Bach Interpretation (Cambridge, 1990)
- 1995 Honorary member of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, Ohio
- 2003 Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
- 2003 Book, Playing with History, shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize
- 2005 Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for a two-year study of Bach’s Passions (2006-2008)
- 2006 Fellow of the British Academy
- 2007 Elected to membership of Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe)
- 2007 Recording of Messiah awarded Gramophone Award, Baroque Vocal category
- 2008 Recording of Messiah awarded MIDEM, Baroque Music award