There are two types of composers: those who write with their audience in mind, and those who write with their performers at heart. Watching John Rutter leading an assembled group of choirs at the Cumann Naisiunta na gCor Choral Workshop at the National Concert Hall, recently, it was easy to picture him in the second category. As approachable as his music is for audiences, he is clearly focussed on the singers, encouraging, cajoling, instructing and conducting them through works such as his Magnificat, among others.
Talking to Rutter, one is struck by his practicality. His conversation is filled with useful details about running a workshop, and this sensible approach extends to his music, which has been taken up enthusiastically by choirs everywhere. He is full of tips and techniques for singers. For example, if there is a problematic triplet rhythm, he will happily replace the Latin phrase with the word "pineapple" so that they get it right. For him Latin is a beautiful language: "Any choral society that sings western music is comfortable with it. If I get sent tapes of my music from Japan or the Philippines or Estonia, it's the language they are happiest with."
Choral music by its very nature is traditional, and accordingly, Rutter's works include many of the staples of the genre - a Requiem, Magnificat and Te Deum - formats which stretch back through Bach ("the one composer you never grow tired of") to perhaps the greatest English composer of all, William Byrd ("150 motets and hardly a dud amongst them").
He also follows a specifically English choral tradition. If Italy could be said to embrace opera like nobody else, and Germany the symphony, then the English express themselves primarily through the choral society. John Rutter's work is clearly informed by this tradition, although he adds an unlikely list of other influences. "I don't know if I have been especially influenced by English composers, but I sang under Benjamin Britten and worked briefly with William Walton and knew Herbert Howells, and am very fond indeed of his style. But I love Gregorian chant, I love Renaissance music, I love Broadway and American music. That has been a big influence on me - the up-front quality of Aaron Copland or Leonard Bernstein."
One tradition to which Rutter is undeniably a party through his life long association with Cambridge is that of the great college choirs and choral scholars. "The Cambridge tradition of singing is one I have been steeped in for decades. That cool sound, rather steady with little vibrato, is something that I have as a sound ideal for choral singing. Not the only one, but one I'm very comfortable with. It has become part of my acoustic mental furniture."
This "acoustic mental furniture" has led to music that is in direct contrast to what most people regard as the dissonance of contemporary art music. Rutter's music has tunes (but then so does Berg's Wozzeck), but also pleasant harmonies and orchestrations that the avant garde might decry as sentimental. Indeed from his talk you suspect that they already have, especially in the ideologically charged 1960s when composers such as Boulez went to apoplectic lengths to disregard anything other than the most radical approach.
"What do you do if you are classically trained but like to write melodies?" asks Rutter. "That isn't a problem in the year 2000, but it was in the 1960s. Everything was 12 tone then. But where has that gone now? That's last year's mashed potato."
Clearly his popularity with audiences and performers is a source of vindication for him now. "The accessibility of my work was one of the things that created a demand for it," he says. Although it would not be fair to suggest that he is in opposition to the more dissonant strains of contemporary music. He professes to respect the great English composer Harrison Birtwistle, a master of complex musical thought. It's as if he recognises that everyone has their own voice to which they must be true.
"If you have any distinctiveness in you it will show through your work. If you try to exclude influences, they will still come through. If you have any personality, the music will have a personality that will ultimately be your own." Chekhov complained that his fellow authors ran with their elbows out even though there was room enough for everybody. One senses Rutter, with his eclecticism, would agree.
But to delve into these academic arguments is almost beside the point when watching Rutter working with amateur singers. "Everybody can sing," might be his motto, as is his belief that choral singing is healthy. "There was a survey done in Italy of the indicators of community health - how much vandalism there is, how much crime, incidents of drugs - and they found that there were the fewest negative indicators where the football team and choral society were thriving." Perhaps this is why his music has sought to give pleasure through its healthily reassuring lines, and his music-making has sought to encourage it by bringing it to those amateurs who love it the most.