John Rutter

Rutter has worked in choral music — as composer, conductor, editor and record producer. He sang in the choir of Clare College, Cambridge, as an undergraduate and wrote the Shepherd's Pipe Carol during his studies; it was published in 1967. He was the college's director of music between 1975 and 1979. In the early 1980s he founded the Cambridge Singers, a professional chamber choir primarily intended for recording, and through his own label, Collegium, took control of the whole chain from manuscript to finished record. The catalogue runs from short anthems and carols to the Gloria, the Requiem, the Magnificat, Mass of the Children and Visions for violin, choir and orchestra. His arrangements, and the Carols for Choirs volumes he edited with David Willcocks, are part of his work as an editor. Born in London in 1945, he has also worked as a conductor. Honours have come from the world he works in: honorary membership of the Westminster Choir College in Princeton in 1980 and of the Guild of Church Musicians in 1988, a Lambeth degree from the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1996 for his service to church music, and a fellowship of the Middle Temple in 2008 for his part in the Temple Festival. He has presided over The Bach Choir and the Association of British Choral Conductors, and has been vice-president of the Joyful Company of Singers; the Te Deum belongs with the larger choral works. He was appointed CBE in 2007, received the Ivors Academy Fellowship in 2023, and was knighted in 2024.