Talk about a wealth of material! I’m going to talk about John Rutter himself and his writing of our piece and then branch out into the meaning of the text in a couple of followup ones. I’d encourage you to follow the link at the end to some earlier material (including some words from the great man himself via Facebook) that I wrote when we sang the Gloria.
First, a little background about the British music scene at the time of the Gloria. While Rutter had published the Christmas carol “Shepherd’s Pipe Carol” (which the Chorale has sung, although it’s better known to us it as “On the Way to Bethlehem”) at the age of 18, he wasn’t very well known in the UK music world even as he produced a number of other Christmas carols. “Difficult though it is to believe today, back in the 1960s and 70s the UK’s musical establishment was so polarized by the latest contemporary fads and fancies that Rutter’s exceptional talent went largely unremarked.” (from “John Rutter: A Life”) I’m reminded of the word of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family.” (6:4 NLT) Ain’t it the truth!
So where did Rutter start getting honored? If you read my earlier post, or you’re a Rutter fan, you know the answer: the good ol’ USA. Rutter was commissioned to write and conduct a 20-minute piece for the Chancel Choir of the First United Methodist Church in Omaha, Nebraska by the choir’s director, Mel Olson. I wasn’t able to track down why Olson wrote to Rutter. (Olson died in 2001.) What is clear is that the Gloria made Rutter’s reputation.
Now Rutter was sitting pretty, as it were. He became the choral director of Clare College, Cambridge. He started his own recording company, Collegium Records. Commissions were pouring in. But he wasn’t immune to grief and loss. His father, a research chemist, died in 1983. You may have noticed that our Requiem sheet music has the dedication “In memoriam L. F. R.” I couldn’t for the life of me find out what the father’s actual names were. Rutter himself said of his work,
It is intimate rather than grand, contemplative and lyric rather than dramatic, consolatory rather than grim, approachable rather than exclusive. I suppose that some will find the sense of comfort and consolation in it facile, but it was what I meant at the time I wrote it, in the shadow of a bereavement of my own. (Liner notes from the Hyperion CD “Requiem and other choral works”)
Once again a major Rutter work had its premier in the US, even though it wasn’t the result of an actual American commission. The section “The Lord Is My Shepherd” was performed as a stand-alone piece by Rutter’s good friends, the Chancel Choir in Omaha directed by Mel Olson. Then there was a partial performance of several sections in California. Finally there was the full performance at the charmingly-named Lovers’ Lane United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas. And the piece just took off. We are told that “In the first six months after publication it received over five hundred orchestral performances in America alone.” (Naxos)
Rutter left Clare College to compose full time and to conduct. Sounds like the perfect life, doesn’t it? Can’t you just see him sitting at a typical cluttered desk in a paneled library, sipping tea and scratching down musical inspirations as they come to him? Well, maybe his desk was cluttered (I don’t know about that) and maybe he does work in a paneled library (I don’t know about that, either). But his life was a lot more complicated than this idealized picture. For one thing, starting in the mid-1980’s (so perhaps at the time he was composing the Requiem—it’s not clear) he developed periodic problems with something called myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. Rutter found that following a strictly regimented schedule helped him be productive even in the midst of a flare-up.
“I wish there was some way of making the life of a composer sexy and exciting and full of incident,” he remarked in an interview for The Telegraph, “It really isn’t.” When composing, Rutter will often work from mid-morning until midnight with only a break for dinner. He thrives on discipline and feels that the most vital aspect of any new piece is to come up with a first-rate idea, which then becomes a vital springboard for the piece as a whole. He prefers to make revisions and corrections as he goes along rather than revisit and make any changes after a piece has appeared in print. (from “John Rutter: A Life” on the music website ClassicFM)
Then, in 2001, Rutter’s son Christopher was killed in a traffic accident. The young man had just started attending Clare College and was a member of the same choir his father had directed earlier in his career. So, as with the Requiem, Rutter directed some of his grief into creative work, writing Mass of the Children which was premiered in New York City’s Carnegie Hall in 2003.
Well, I thought I’d go onto YouTube to see if there were any interviews with Rutter himself about how he wrote the Requiem and found this short one from November 2017 recorded in conjunction with a memorial service for the victims of the terrorist attack in Nice. Two observations about this vidoe: 1) I can’t bee-leeve it’s had only 50 views! (so let’s bump it up a little) and 2) you’ll get some nice additional info about the musical inspiration Rutter drew from the Requiem of Gabriel Faurè.
And the promised previous post (PPP):
“How Is John Rutter Connected to the Good Ol’ USA?“
A-a-a-nd, one additional link: Because I found Rutter and his Requiem to be so fascinating, I ended up writing a whole book about it, including this and other introductory material and then analyzing the texts for each section. You can buy the book here on my website or through Amazon.
