Books by John (University of Glasgow) Butt

Why is Bach's music still valuable? Through detailed analysis of the Passions, this 2010 book balances the traditional concern of Bach scholarship - Bach's local creative context - with an analysis of much broader cultural developments. An important contribution to the debate about the culture of 'classical music', its origins, priorities and survival.

In this challenging 2002 study, John Butt sums up debates on the nature of historically informed musical performance, calling upon a seemingly inexhaustible fund of ideas gleaned from historical musicology, analytic philosophy, literary theory, historiography and theories of modernism and postmodernism.