Alan Bush. A life - ACE128.2

Photographs of Alan Bush as a baby and grown up, intercut with those of Queen Victoria and Lenin. Alan Bush speaking: born 1900, two older brothers. The fashion for middle-class people to have children taught the piano. He had lessons and began to compose. His teacher showed these early works to a friend, Sir Edward Elgar. Played for Elgar who didn’t discourage him. He became a student at the Royal Academy of Music in 1918, studying piano, organ, and composition. Bush playing Relinquishment, Op:11, 1928. Bush speaks being taught piano by Lily West who arranged for him to play some of John Ireland’s compositions for the composer. Went to study with Ireland. Ensemble plays excerpt from Bush’s Five Pieces for Violin, Viola, Cello, Clarinet and Horn, Op.6 (1925), which was dedicated to John Ireland. Bush talks about political views, discovering composer, Rutland Boughton, a member of the English Communist Party, far more famous in the teens and twenties than any English composer except Elgar. Posters for Boughton’s The Immortal Hour, the "Celtic Twilight" "par excellence", says Bush. Bush talks more about Boughton’s operas. Photographs of of Boughton and Herbert Morrison, Bush VO. Bush talks about foundation of London Labour Choral Union by Boughton and Morrison. Texts sung "were concerned with the fight for Socialism". Photograph of building