Alan Bush
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Alan (Dudley) Bush
(b London, 22 Dec 1900). English composer. He studied at the RAM with Corder (1918-22) and privately with Ireland, going on to study musicology and philosophy at Berlin University (1929-31). In 1925 he began teaching at the RAM and in 1936, already a committed communist, founded the Workers' Music Association. His earlier works (Dialectic for string quartet,1929; First Symphony in C, 1940) are progressive, using his own ‘thematic’ method, in which each note must be thematically significant. After the war he simplified his style and began a series of operas expressing his political beliefs: Wat Tyler (1953), Men of Blackmoor (1956), The Sugar Reapers (1966) and Joe Hill (1970), all produced in East Germany. He has also composed much choral, chamber and solo vocal music.
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Alan Bush
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Alan Bush
Biography
Bush studied at the RAM as well as philosophy and musicology at the University of Berlin. He has served as a professor of music at the RAM and as conductor to the London Labour Choral Union. A committed communist, he founded the Worker's Music Association in 1936. Bush developed a 'thematic' method of composition in which, similar to Schoenberg's 12-tone serialism, every note must be thematically significant. The series is used with a tonal structure, accompanied by or as an accompaniment to other moving, thematically composed parts. Bush gradually moved from contrapuntal style to a more sensuous, directly harmonic one. These later works also contain a national element and his political beliefs played a role in his compositional decisions. The simplifications of his style may be attributed to his sensitivity to the accessibility of his music to the general public. These ideas were expressed particularly in his later operas, such as = Wat Tyler= (1953) and =Men of Blackmoor= (1960). He has also written choral, chamber and solo vocal music. ~ Lynn Vought, RoviDiscography
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Alan Bush
Alan Dudley Bush (22 December 1900 –31 October 1995) was a British composer and pianist. He was a committed socialist, and politics sometimes provided central themes in his music.[1]
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Personal life
Alan was born in Dulwich, London, to Alfred Walter Bush (1869–1935), a director of the manufacturing chemists, W. J. Bush & Co., and his wife, Alice Maud Brinsley (1870–1951).[2] He was educated first at Highgate School (1911–17) and then at the Royal Academy of Music (1918–22), where he studied composition under Frederick Corder and piano with Tobias Matthay. Later he studied musicology and philosophy with Johannes Wolf and Friedrich Blumein at the University of Berlin (1929–31), as well as taking composition lessons (1927–32) with John Ireland. He also studied the piano under Benno Moiseiwitsch and Artur Schnabel .[3] One of his fellow composition students was Michael Head, who introduced Bush to his younger sister Nancy. They married in 1931. She provided libretti for three of his four full-length operas, three children's operas and other works. [4]
From 1925 to 1978 he taught at the Royal Academy of Music where his compositions included A Homage to William Sterndale Bennett. His academic training, particularly in Berlin, put him in contact with well known socialist artists from different traditions, such as Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler.
Music and politics
He was known as an outspoken advocate of Marxism, holding posts as conductor of the London Labour Choral Union and in 1936 was co-founder of the Workers' Music Association, and later its President. Bush composed the music for and conducted the choir at the Pageant of Labour at the Crystal Palace on 15–20 October 1934.[5] This influence can also be seen in many of his works, including the operas Wat Tyler (1948–50) and Men of Blackmoor (1954–55), and his piano concerto which has a communist text declaimed by a male chorus in the last movement. An embargo on his work at the end of the war by the establishment led to Ralph Vaughan Williams refusing a BBC commission in protest, even though he did not share Bush's political views.
Other works include four symphonies (No. 1 in C; No. 2, The Nottingham;[6] No. 3, Byron Symphony and No. 4, Lascaux Symphony); Variations, Nocturne and Finale on an English Sea-song, Op. 60, for piano and orchestra; and Songs of the Doomed.
Well known students
One of his most notable students is Michael Nyman.[7]
Death
He died in Watford in 1995 after a short illness.
Footnotes
- ^ http://www.alanbushtrust.org.uk/articles/article_dhall.asp?room=Articles
- ^ Richard Stoker (2004). Bush, Alan Dudley (1900–1995). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2011-07-15.
- ^ Obituary, The Daily Telegraph, 3 Nov 1995
- ^ Bush, Alan (1980), "In my eighth decade", In my eighth decade and other essays, London: Kahn and Averill (Stanmore Press Ltd), p. 19, ISBN 0-900707-61-5
- ^ Official Book and Programme of the Pageant of Labour, 1934
- ^ http://naxosmusiclibrary.com/composer/btm.asp?composerid=120007
- ^ http://www.artistdirect.com/artist/bio/michael-nyman/474377
References
- Richard Stoker, ‘Bush, Alan Dudley (1900–1995)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 17 February 2008
Further reading
- Bullivant, Joanna. 2009. "Modernism, Politics, and Individuality in 1930s Britain: The Case of Alan Bush". Music & Letters 90, no. 3 (August): 432–52.
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Oxford Grove Music Encyclopedia
The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.
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