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Hugh Keyte, John Byrt (1940–2021), Early Music, Volume 49, Issue 2, May 2021, Pages 321–322, https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caab041
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John Byrt died on 15 January, shortly after his 80th birthday, from hospital-acquired Covid-19: tragically, his Covid injection a week before admission had not had time to take effect.
Bristol-born, John was one of the many successful pupils of the celebrated one-armed organist Douglas Fox, who taught at Clifton College. He was already a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists in 1959 when he went up to St John’s College, Oxford, as organ scholar. Tutored by Edmund Rubbra, John went on to complete a doctorate on ‘Form and Style in the Works of Sebastian and Emanuel Bach’ as a junior research fellow of St John’s.
In 1964 John succeeded László Heltay as conductor of the Schola Cantorum of Oxford, turning an already outstanding student choir into what was arguably the best in the country at the time. Alumni under his direction included Emma Kirkby and Andrew Parrott, the latter eventually succeeding him as conductor. Genial and greatly loved, John was a supremely gifted choral director, with the kind of enquiring mind that was never content to stick to the standard repertory or to follow received performance practice unthinkingly.
