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Alan Bush
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alan Bush (December 22, 1900 – October 31, 1995) was a British composer and pianist.
Bush was born in London first attending Highgate School and then the Royal Academy of Music. Later he studied musicology and philosophy in Berlin and later still had lessons with the composer John Ireland. He studied the piano under Benno Moiseiwitsch and Artur Schnabel. From 1925 to 1978 he taught at the Royal Academy of Music.
He was known as an outspoken advocate of Marxism, holding posts as conductor of the London Labour Choral Union and, from 1936, chairman of the Workers' Music Association. 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.
Other works include four symphonies: No.1 in C; No.2,'The Nottingham'; 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. He died in Watford in 1995 after a short illness.