David and June Gordon Lecture

The inaugural David and June Gordon Lecture will be given by Professor John Butt.

This evening’s lecture will be preceded by a Recital in the Chapel at Haddo by Professor Butt.

Listening in the lead – reassessing the fundamentals of music

The listener is often neglected in discussion of classical music, even though there would hardly be any basis or justification for this music without one. This lecture represents an attempt at rehabilitating listening, to show how most aspects of creative musical activity presuppose some form of listening and how different musical cultures develop this facility in different ways. Listening involves not only mental modelling of images and sensations in sound but also physical ones – ways of movement and senses of embodiment. More attention to the creative role of the listener may be key to developing something of the future culture of music, particularly in the classical field.

John Butt, OBE, FRSE, FBA is an award-winning orchestral and choral conductor, organist, harpsichordist and scholar. He is the Gardiner Chair of Music at the University of Glasgow and is music director of the Dunedin Consort.