David Butt, flautist known to Prommers for his frenetic Sailor’s Hornpipe

David Butt, who has died aged 89, was Principal Flute in the BBC Symphony Orchestra for 38 years, from 1960 to 1998, during which he became familiar to promenaders at the Last Night of the Proms, where his performance of The Sailor’s Hornpipe (part of Sir Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs), accompanied by a frenetic cacophony of miniature foghorns and party horns, delighted audiences, madly bobbing up and down, year after year.

David Butt was born in Salisbury on January 7 1936 and his love of music was nurtured by his parents, his teachers at Bishop Wordsworth’s School, and the Salisbury Orchestral Society, of which he became a member. While still at school he was invited by Ruth Railton to join the National Youth Orchestra as First Flute. He would return to the NYO as a coach years later.

He studied at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) under Gareth Morris, winning several prizes. Later in his career, he received the Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music (FRAM) award, an honour bestowed on alumni who have distinguished themselves in their field.

His studies were interrupted by National Service in the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst Band, and it was during this time that he met his future wife, Valerie, to whom he taught the flute and who also studied at the RAM and later became a flute teacher herself.

His studies completed, Butt joined the Royal Opera House orchestra, playing flute and piccolo under the baton of Rudolf Kempe, before joining the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1960. Over the next nearly four decades he toured extensively with the orchestra, played under conductors including Sir Adrian Boult, Rudolf Schwarz, Günter Wand, Pierre Boulez, Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Sir Andrew Davis, and performed in 38 “Last Nights” at the Royal Albert Hall. For many years Butt played on a wooden Rudall Carte flute, later switching to a Muramatsu silver flute during his time at the BBC.

He also worked directly with composers including Zoltán Kodály and Igor Stravinsky, who conducted performances of their own works including the former’s folk opera Háry János and the latter’s Symphony in C. He formed a strong relationship with Pierre Boulez when he performed the composer’s experimental composition Explosante Fixe (“for flute with live electronics”) at concert halls around Europe; the piece includes a 15-minute flute solo.

In 1995, when the BBC orchestra performed the British premiere of Symphony of Time and the River by John McCabe, the Telegraph’s Matthew Rye felt that Butt’s “magical flute solo” had redeemed an otherwise “rather routine” evening.

Butt performed often as guest principal with the Philharmonia and the London Philharmonic orchestras and also played at Glyndebourne and at the Aldeburgh Festival. When in 1976 he performed in a sell-out season of concerts with the London Bach Orchestra at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the orchestra manager’s proud boast was: “The personnel [are] so fine that soloists are rarely brought in.”

He was also a sought-after session musician, taking part in recordings with The Beatles and Kate Bush, and film soundtracks including Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Oliver! and The Virgin and the Gypsy.

Butt was a long-standing professor at the Royal College of Music and many of his students went on to enjoy careers as professional flautists. He was made an honorary member of the RCM in 1982.

He and his wife Valerie lived in a Victorian house at Epsom in Surrey, where a 1991 article in the Journal of the British Flute Society noted the presence of “a small collection of fascinating (and noisy) old clocks”. Valerie survives him with their two sons and a daughter.

David Butt, born January 7 1936, died March 18 2025