CMPCP/IMR Performance Research Seminars are sponsored by the AHRC 
Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice and the 
Institute of Musical Research. For further information see 
www.cmpcp.ac.uk/imr2014.html.

STOP PRESS
The seminar scheduled for 17 February 2014 – ‘The pianist as actor: 
embodying hybrid knowledge’, to be presented by Paul Barker and Alban 
Coombs – has been postponed due to non-availability of the presenters. 
Information about the revised date will follow in due course.

Tempo relationships in eighteenth-century music - historically-inspired 
creativity?
John Butt (University of Glasgow)
24 February 2014
17.00 - 18.30
Chancellor's Hall, Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, 
London WC1

It is easy to get fanatical about eighteenth-century tempo and tempo 
relationships. Theoretical sources provide a tempting array of 
suggestions and apparent prescriptions, but there is really very little 
hard and fast evidence of a system that can be applied beyond very local 
parameters. Nevertheless, it is likely that many composers would have 
read and thought about proportional relationships surviving in old 
treatises even if they misunderstood these in many respects. One 
particularly attractive system of conventions come from Kirnberger, 
supposedly derived from J. S. Bach (if so, at what stage in the latter's 
career?). This talk will examine some of John Butt's recent experiments 
in performing and recording works by Bach, Handel and Mozart, showing 
how following suppositions that can never have full historical validity 
can make a useful starting point for understanding eighteenth-century 
tempo. While no claims can be made for historical veracity, it is 
perhaps important to note that he would not have interpreted the music 
the way he did without imagining possible historical scenarios.

John Butt is Gardiner Professor of Music at the University of Glasgow 
and Musical Director of Edinburgh's Dunedin Consort. Having worked at 
the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Cambridge, 
he has always pursued a dual career as scholar and performer. His 
scholarly work has resulted in five monographs, concerning Bach and the 
Baroque, performance practice and issues of modernity and its 
relationship to classical music. He has recorded widely as an organist 
and harpsichordist and produced seven recordings as director of the 
Dunedin Consort (three of which have been nominated for Gramophone 
Awards, Handel's Messiah winning the Baroque vocal award in 2007). 
Recent recordings include Bach's John Passion, recorded for the first 
time with its original liturgy, and the Brandenburg Concertos at low 
chamber pitch. 2014 will see the release of a reconstruction of the 
first performance of Mozart's Requiem and Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, 
played on harpsichord. In addition to his work with Dunedin, he also 
regularly conducts other groups such as the OAE, Irish Baroque Orchestra 
and Scottish Chamber Orchestra.