John Purser (born 1942) is a Scottish composer, musicologist, and music historian. He is also a playwright.^[1][2]

Purser was born in Glasgow. He initiated the reconstruction that commenced in 1991 of the Iron Age Deskford Carnyx, producing a replica that was first played in 1993 by trombonist John Kenny.^[3]

Purser's book Scotland's Music,^[4] published in March 1992 (new edition October 2007), was a major reference work on musical history from the Bronze Age to the present. It was followed by a thirty-programme radio series of the same title, written and presented by him, which was broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland and totalled 45 hours, with recordings commissioned for the series including reconstructions of early music and works by many little-known composers. A double CD was subsequently produced with a small selection of the music.^[1] Purser's work has contributed to a revival of interest in such composers as John Clerk of Penicuik^[5] and John Thomson.

'Consider the Story', a privately released disc of Purser's music, was released in 2021. It includes the song cycle Six Sea Songs (1966, setting words by the composer's father J W R Purser), the Kalavrita string quartet (1981), and the Sonata for Trombone and Piano (2001).^[6]

Purser's plays include the radio play Carver about Robert Carver, the 16th-century Scottish composer of church music, which won a Giles Cooper Award.^[1] He also wrote Parrots and Owls about John Ruskin and the O'Shea brothers.