2025 marked 100 years since the appointment of Alan Bush (1900-1995) as Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, and 30 years since his death in 1995.
To commemorate Bush’s long affiliation with the Academy, Dr Joanna Bullivant (author of Alan Bush, Modern Music, and the Cold War, Cambridge University Press, 2017), Edward Gregson (composer and former student of Alan Bush) and Dr Jonathan Clinch (Lecturer in Academic Studies at the Academy) reconsidered his contribution to 20th-century British music and his activities as a teacher and mentor. The panel discussion was interspersed with performances by PhD students Xiaowen Shang (piano) and Isaac Shieh (horn), who performed Bush’s Nocturne, Op 46 (1956) and Autumn Poem, Op 45 (1954).
Academy PhD student Toby Carr contributed the following response to the event:
“As someone with almost no prior knowledge of Alan Bush, I found this event illuminating, giving an introduction to the life and work of a remarkable composer and teacher who lived for almost the entirety of the 20th century. As an avowed communist his relationship with the cultural establishment was often strained by geopolitics, with, for example, his status at the BBC fluctuating during the Second World War as the Soviet Union changed from a potential adversary to an ally. The effective advocacy of Vaughan Williams for his colleague was memorably related; a reminder of the difference that high-profile cultural figures can make.
Many British composers of Bush’s time were confronting the harmonic innovations and new orthodoxies of the Second Viennese School. That he was never a believer in this new order was made clear, but we also heard of his deep engagement with the compositional techniques and how this was brought to life with and for his students. I found this description of a teacher who found value even in music he didn’t love, and who was willing to bring his capacities to bear on this thorny material for the good of his students, to be a powerful one.
As ever, no matter how interesting the discussion is, it is a joy to have it interrupted for musical performances, particularly ones of this quality. I had never knowingly heard a note that Alan Bush had written prior to this evening, and found both pieces we heard to be full of colour, nuance and with the mixture of innovation and deep engagement with the classical music canon which draws me to contemporary works. We were encouraged to go and listen to his Dialectic for String Quartet, Op 15, and having now done so I can happily pass the message on.”
Read more about the Alan Bush Music Trust
Image: Courtesy of the Alan Bush Trust