John Rutter - Influences

Influences

Rutter's music is eclectic, showing the influences of the French and English choral traditions of the early 20th century, as well as of light music and American classic songwriting. Almost every choral anthem and hymn that he writes, in addition to the standard piano/organ accompaniment, has a subsequent orchestral accompaniment as well, utilizing various different instrumentations, such as strings only, strings and woodwinds, or full orchestra with brass and percussion, among others.

Despite composing and conducting much religious music, Rutter told the US television program 60 Minutes in 2003 that he was not particularly a religious man, yet still deeply spiritual and inspired by the spirituality of sacred verses and prayers. The 60 Minutes program, which aired a week before Christmas 2003, focused on Rutter's popularity with choral groups in the United States, Britain and other parts of the world, and on his composition, Mass of the Children, composed after the sudden death of his son Christopher while a student at Clare College, Cambridge (where Rutter himself had studied).

In a 2009 interview, Rutter discussed his understanding of "genius" and its unique ability to transform lives - whether that genius is communicated in the form of music or other mediums. He likened the purity of music to that of mathematics, and even connected the two with a reference to the discoveries of the early Greeks that frequencies of harmonic pitches are related by whole-number ratios.