Composer Won’t Let Bach Intimidate Him : Classical music: Britain’s John Rutter attempts to ‘to come out from under the shade of the great masters’ with his own Magnificat. Its first West Coast performance will be Saturday in Costa Mesa by the Master Chorale of Orange County.

For most classical music audiences, there is only one Magnificat: Bach’s. But British composer John Rutter refuses to let that intimidate him.

Rutter has written his own Magnificat, which will receive its first West Coast performance Saturday by the Master Chorale of Orange County under the direction of William Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

“You just have to come out from under the shade of the great masters,” Rutter, 45, said in a recent phone interview from his home in London.

“One of the lessons I learned from my high school music instructor was that one man’s genius doesn’t negate another man’s talent. Just because Bach has written a Magnificat doesn’t mean no one else can. If all composers had that view, composition would just stop. . . . That’s the paralyzing effect of the past.”

Rutter wrote his Magnificat from March to April of this year and conducted the world premiere with his choir, the Cambridge Singers, in Carnegie Hall in New York in May.

Having heard about the piece, Master Chorale director Hall called the composer, whom he had met on an earlier trip to California, and asked whether he could do a pre-publication performance. (The work will not be published until next year.)

“I gave permission for the score to be duplicated,” Rutter said. “He actually worked from a Xerox of the manuscript. So it’s kind of a sneak premiere performance.”

Rutter described the 40-minute works as “an extended setting” of the traditional Latin text (Luke 1: 46-55).

“There really are not many examples of that,” the composer said. “The only immediate precedent is Bach’s. But all resemblance ends there. There is absolutely no connection in style, intent or aspiration between me and Johann Sebastian Bach.”

In fact, Rutter’s approach is quite different from the Baroque master’s.

“I haven’t thought of it in any sense as a sacred work, which can be oppressively churchy,” he said.

“The work is very much joyful and celebratory, the kind of thing you’d find in Spain or Italy or Mexico when everybody celebrates a festival of the Virgin. They get out on the street, play music, sing and dance. A lot of the music really does sound perfectly secular or has that kind of joyful spirit.”

Rutter also draws on an American tradition for his inspiration.

“The tradition it stems from is very much the musical theater, which is very important to me, even though I’m not an American,” he said. “But I feel that I have half a home on Broadway. I’m not ashamed that is part of the way music comes from me.

“I see absolutely no reason not to borrow the idiom of the musical theater when doing a work in a concert hall. It would be a shame to make a barrier where there ought to be none.”

Rutter said that writing a Magnificat was an idea he had in mind “for some years but that it didn’t come into fruition until now.

“I’ve written a Gloria, I’ve written a Requiem, I’ve written a Te Deum, but never a Magnificat. I never attempted a Stabat Mater. That’s so uniformly sad in mood.

“On the other hand, the Magnificat does encompass a whole gamut of different moods and emotions within a short span.

“It’s a lovely text. Traditionally, the text was supposed to be uttered by the Virgin Mary when she found out she was pregnant. It expresses trust in God’s providence. In a way, the text is both feminine--for obvious reasons--and also it has got a lot of rather masculine qualities. There is great variety in it.

“All the famous liturgical texts have their own challenges. All are mountain peaks waiting to be climbed by every composer.”

Rutter advised listeners that “it wouldn’t be very fruitful to look at the work as serious contemporary music.”

“I hate the words contemporary avant-garde ,” he said . “The work doesn’t relate to that at all. I don’t ever write anything that is inaccessible. I’m not an esoteric composer. If anything, critics complain about that. They say, ‘This music is too accessible. There must be something wrong with it.’ That’s dogged my footsteps a bit.

“But I feel that whatever skill and craftsmanship went into a work is the composer’s own private concern. In the end, I want music to be presented in a way that makes it as a simple as possible.

“But maybe it’s a kind of deceptive simplicity. The Magnificat may seem like a straightforward, joyful dance, but maybe there’s more under the surface.”

Still, the surface accessibility of Rutter’s music has helped him become that comparatively rare thing: a contemporary composer whose works are frequently performed.

“I’m immensely fortunate about that, there is no doubt,” Rutter said. “The number of performances of things I’ve written has astounded me. Within the first six months of my Requiem being published in 1986, something like 500 performances were logged with the publisher. And it has gone on from there.

“I have no idea how the Magnificat will do. But there have been many inquiries for performance as soon as it’s published.”

Rutter said the New World seems to show more interest in his music than the Old, however.

“There’s a hunger for new music in America in particular because there are so many performing groups who want to try something new,” he said. “I’ve never had any problem getting performances. In a way, overexposure can be the greater risk. One would hate to wear something out. . . .

“I’ve just been very, very lucky. It may have a lot to do with the adventurousness in America. It’s harder to get anything newly written accepted in Europe.”

William Hall will conduct the first West Coast performance of John Rutter’s Magnificat on a holiday program at 8 p.m. on Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $12.50 to $35. Information: (714) 556-6262.