53 Facts About Alan Bush

Alan Dudley Bush was a British composer, pianist, conductor, teacher and political activist.

Alan Bush composed prolifically across a range of genres, but struggled through his lifetime for recognition from the British musical establishment, which largely ignored his works.

Alan Bush wrote several large-scale works in the 1930s, and was heavily involved with workers' choirs for whom he composed pageants, choruses and songs.

Alan Bush taught composition at the RAM for more than 50 years, published two books, was the founder and long-time president of the Workers' Music Association, and served as chairman and later vice-president of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain.

Alan Bush was born in Dulwich, South London, on 22 December 1900, the third and youngest son of Alfred Walter Alan Bush and Alice Maud, nee Brinsley.

The other, Hamilton Brinsley Alan Bush, went into the family business and ran twice as Liberal candidate for Watford in the 1950s.

The end of the war in November 1918 meant that Alan Bush narrowly avoided being called up for military service; meantime, having determined on a musical career, he had applied to and been accepted by the RAM, where he began his studies in the spring of 1918.

At the RAM, Alan Bush studied composition under Frederick Corder and piano with Tobias Matthay.

Alan Bush made rapid progress, and won various scholarships and awards, including the Thalberg Scholarship, the Phillimore piano prize, and a Carnegie award for composition.

Alan Bush produced the first compositions of his formal canon: Three Pieces for Two Pianos, Op.

In 1922 Alan Bush graduated from the RAM, but continued to study composition privately under John Ireland, with whom he formed an enduring friendship.

In 1925 Alan Bush was appointed to a teaching post at the RAM, as a professor of harmony and composition, under terms that gave him scope to continue with his studies and to travel.

Alan Bush took further piano study from two pupils of Leschetizky, Benno Moiseiwitsch and Mabel Lander, from whom he learned the Leschetizky method.

In 1928 Alan Bush returned to Berlin, to perform with the Brosa Quartet at the Bechstein Hall, in a concert of his own music which included the premieres of the chamber work Five Pieces, Op.

Alan Bush had begun to develop an interest in politics during the war years.

Alan Bush was appointed as Boughton's assistant, and two years later, he succeeded Boughton as the LLCU's chief musical adviser, remaining in this post until the body disbanded in 1940.

Alan Bush left the ILP in 1929, and joined the Labour Party proper, before taking extended leave from the RAM to begin a two-year course in philosophy and musicology at Berlin's Friedrich-Wilhelm University.

Alan Bush resumed his RAM and LLCU duties, and in 1932 accepted a new appointment, as an examiner for the Associated Board of London's Royal Schools of Music, a post which involved extensive overseas travel.

Tippett, who co-conducted the event, later described it as a "high water mark" in Alan Bush's drive to provide workers' choirs with settings for left-wing texts.

In 1936 Alan Bush was one of the founders of the Workers' Musical Association, and became its first chairman.

In 1935 Alan Bush began work on a piano concerto which, completed in 1937, included the unusual feature of a mixed chorus and baritone soloist in the finale, singing a radical text by Randall Swingler.

Alan Bush played the piano part when the work was premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Adrian Boult on 4 March 1938.

Alan Bush provided much of the music, and acted as general director, for the London Co-operative Societies' pageant "Towards Tomorrow", held at Wembley Stadium on 2 July 1938.

Alan Bush began to write a major orchestral work, his Symphony No 1 in C Amid this busy life Bush was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music.

When war broke out in September 1939, Alan Bush registered for military service under the National Service Act of 1939.

Alan Bush was not called up immediately, and continued his musical life, helping to form the WMA Singers to replace the now-defunct LLCU, and founding the William Morris Music Society.

Alan Bush was among many musicians, artists and writers who in January 1941 signed up to the communist-led People's Convention, which promoted a six-point radical anti-war programme that included friendship with the Soviet Union and "a people's peace".

In November 1941 Alan Bush was conscripted into the army, and after initial training was assigned to the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Alan Bush performed regularly with the London String Orchestra, and in 1944 was the piano soloist in the British premiere of Shostakovich's Piano Quintet.

The posting was withdrawn; and Alan Bush remained in London until his discharge in December 1945.

Nancy Alan Bush writes that the BBC considered him persona non grata, and imposed an almost complete though unofficial broadcast ban that lasted for some 15 years after the war.

In 1948 Alan Bush accepted a commission from the Nottingham Co-operative Society to write a symphony as part of the city's quincentennial celebrations in 1949.

Alan Bush produced a full-length textbook, Strict Counterpoint in the Palestrina Style.

Alan Bush intended to collect appropriate musical material from British Guiana, but an attempt to visit the colony in 1957 was thwarted when its government refused him entry.

The ban was rescinded the following year, and in 1959 Alan Bush was able to gather and record a great deal of authentic music from the local African and Indian populations.

Alan Bush was slowly being recognised for his achievements, even by those who had long cold-shouldered him.

Alan Bush featured in a further television programme, broadcast on 25 October 1975, in a series entitled "Born in 1900".

In old age, Alan Bush continued to lead an active and productive life, punctuated by periodic commemorations of his life and works.

In 1978 Alan Bush retired from the RAM after 52 years' service.

In 1982 Alan Bush visited the Lascaux caves in south-western France, and was inspired by the prehistoric cave paintings to write his fourth and final symphony, Op.

Alan Bush lived on quietly at Radlett for another four years, able to recall the events of his youth but with no memory of the last fifty years and unaware of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Alan Bush died in Watford General hospital on 31 October 1995, after a short illness, at the age of 94.

Nancy Alan Bush describes the Piano Concerto as Alan Bush's first attempt to fuse his musical and political ideas.

Alan Bush first outlined the basis of his new method of composition in an article, "The Crisis of Modern Music", which appeared in WMA's Keynote magazine in spring 1946.

The method, in which every note has thematic significance, has drawn comparison by critics with Schoenberg's twelve-note system, although Alan Bush rejected this equation.

The extent to which Alan Bush's music changed substantially after the war was addressed by Meirion Bowen, reviewing a Alan Bush concert in the 1980s.

Alan Bush remained a pianist of consequence, with a strong and reliable, if heavy, touch.

The critic Hugo Cole thought that, as a composer, Alan Bush came close to Paul Hindemith's ideal: "one for whom music is felt as a moral and social force, and only incidentally as a means of personal expression".

Alan Bush's range is wide, the quality of his music consistently excellent.

Alan Bush has the intellectual concentration of Tippett, the easy command and expansiveness of Walton, the nervous intensity of Rawsthorne, the serene leisureliness of Rubbra.

Alan Bush is surpassed only in melody, as are the others, by Walton, but not even by him in harmonic richness, nor by Tippett in contrapuntal originality and the expressive power of rather austere musical thought, nor by Rawsthorne in concise, compelling utterance and telling invention, nor by Rubbra in handling large forms well.

Alan Bush's music was under-represented in the concert repertoire in his lifetime, and virtually disappeared after his death.

Alan Bush was not a natural melodist a la Dvorak, though he could produce an appealing tune when he set his mind to it.