Alan Dudley Bush (22 December 1900 – 31 October 1995) was a British composer, pianist, conductor, teacher and political activist. A committed communist, his uncompromising political beliefs were often reflected in his music. He composed prolifically across a range of genres but struggled through his lifetime for recognition from the British musical establishment, which largely ignored his works.

From a prosperous middle-class background, Bush enjoyed considerable success as a student at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in the early 1920s and spent much of the decade furthering his compositional and piano-playing skills under distinguished tutors. A two-year period in Berlin from 1929 to 1931, early in the Nazi Party's rise to power, cemented Bush's political convictions and moved him from the mainstream Labour Party to the Communist Party of Great Britain, which he joined in 1935. He wrote several large-scale works in the 1930s and was heavily involved with workers' choirs, for whom he composed pageants, choruses and songs. His pro-Soviet stance led to the BBC temporarily banning his music in the early years of the Second World War, and his refusal to modify his position in the postwar Cold War era led to a more prolonged semi-ostracism of his music. As a result, the four major operas he wrote between 1950 and 1970 were all premiered in East Germany.

In his prewar works, Bush's style was influenced by the avant-garde European idioms of the inter-war years. He began to simplify his style during and after the war, in line with his Marxism-inspired belief that music should be accessible to the masses. Despite the difficulties he encountered in getting his works performed in the West, he continued to compose until well into his eighties. He 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. His contribution to musical life began to be recognised towards the end of his life, in the form of doctorates from two universities and numerous tribute concerts. Since his death in 1995, aged 94, his musical legacy has been nurtured by the Alan Bush Music Trust, established in 1997.

Life and career

Family background and early life

Bush was born in Dulwich, South London, on 22 December 1900, the third and youngest son of Alfred Walter Bush and Alice Maud, née Brinsley. He made rapid progress, and won various scholarships and awards, including the Thalberg Scholarship, the Phillimore piano prize, and a Carnegie award for composition. and also made his first attempt to write opera – a scene from Bulwer Lytton's novel The Last Days of Pompeii, with a libretto by his brother Brinsley. The work, with Bush at the piano, received a single private performance with family members and friends forming the cast. The manuscript was later destroyed by Bush.

Among Bush's fellow students was Michael Head. The two became friends, as a result of which Bush met Head's 14-year-old sister Nancy. In 1931, ten years after their first meeting, Bush and Nancy would marry and begin a lifelong artistic partnership in which she became Bush's principal librettist, as well as providing the texts for many of his other vocal works. In 1925 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. He took further piano study from two pupils of Theodor Leschetizky, Benno Moiseiwitsch and Mabel Lander, from whom he learned the Leschetizky method.

Many of Bush's best-known works were written in the immediate postwar years. Anthony Payne described the Three Concert Studies for Piano Trio (Op. 31) of 1947 as exceeding Britten in its inventiveness, "a high-water mark in Bush's mature art". The Violin Concerto (Op. 32, 1948) has been cited as "a work as beautiful and refined as any in the genre since Walton's". The Dorian Passacaglia and Fugue for timpani, percussion and strings, (Op. 52, 1959), involves eight variations in the Dorian mode, followed by eight in other modes culminating in a final quadruple fugue in six parts. Musical Opinions critic praised the composer's "wonderful control and splendid craftsmanship" in this piece, and predicted that it could become the most popular of all Bush's orchestral works.

Bush's music was under-represented in the concert repertoire in his lifetime, and virtually disappeared after his death. The 2000 centenary of his birth was markedly low key; the Prom season ignored him, although there was a memorial concert at the Wigmore Hall on 1 November, and a BBC broadcast of the Piano Concerto on 19 December. The centenary, albeit quietly observed, helped to introduce the name and music of Bush to a new generation of music lovers, and generated an increase in both performance and recordings. Scholars such as Paul Harper-Scott and Joanna Bullivant have obtained access to new material, including documents released since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Bush's MI5 file. This, says Bullivant, enables a more informed assessment of the interrelationships within Bush's music and his communism, and of the inherent conflicting priorities.

In October 1997 family members and friends founded The Alan Bush Music Trust "to promote the education and appreciation by the public in and of music and, in particular, the works of the British composer Alan Bush". The trust provides a newsletter, features news stories, promotes performances and recordings of Bush's works, and through its website reproduces wide-ranging critical and biographical material.

It continues to monitor concert performances of Bush's works, and other Bush-related events, at home and abroad.

At the time of Bush's centenary, Martin Anderson, writing in the British Music Information Centre's newsletter, summarised Bush's compositional career:

<blockquote>Bush was not a natural melodist à la Dvorák, though he could produce an appealing tune when he set his mind to it. But he was a first-rate contrapuntist, and his harmonic world can glow with a rare internal warmth. It would be foolish to claim that everything he wrote was a masterpiece – and equally idiotic to turn our backs on the many outstanding scores still awaiting assiduous attention.</blockquote>

Recordings

Before Bush's centenary year, 2000, the few available recordings of his music included none of the major works. In the 21st century much has been added, including recordings of Symphonies 1, 2 and 4, the Piano and Violin Concertos, many of the main vocal works, the Twenty-Four Preludes, and the complete organ works.

Notes and references

Notes

Citations

Sources

  • Alan Bush: A Life (1983), documentary directed by Anna Ambrose, British Film Institute
  • Wat Tyler libretto A photostat typescript of the Nancy Bush's original libretto
  • Violin Concerto, Six short pieces & Dialectic – Claudio Records Review & Track Listing
  • Alan Bush manuscripts in the British Library