40 March 1986 Marxism Today of its own historical logic. This was most PARALLEL LIVES sharply reflected when in 1949, he travelled to Bohemia with a small vocal There is always a certain poignancy - and often a degree of irony - in the future course group and performed the work on the of old friendships. In the case of composers Michael Tippett and Alan Bush, friends empty village site, restoring it to history. and sometime associates since the 1930s, the years have been less than even-handed. It was a very immediate and particular Tippett whose Mask of Time will be performed this month at the Royal Festival Hall, gesture of remembrance that underlined is widely regarded as the most important living English composer; Bush is only now, more than one point about Bush's back­ in his 86th year, receiving his full due of attention. ground and method. He had grown up, In many particulars, they seem an unlikely pair, and it would be forgivably easy to much like Tippett, in a less than orthodox see Tippett as the apolitical opposite to Bush's staunchly ideological line. Yet as middle-class setting. Along with the then Brian Morton and Kenny Mathieson describe below, their careers and their work conventional piano lessons, his parents show a surprisingly consistent outline. had provided a less expected background draws on several at once. His insistence on in spiritualism, which the young Bush a democratic standard, a music that could quickly turned on it,s head: 'In 1934 I be played by amateur groups, has tended became convinced that the facts about life, to put off (far more than political convic­ including human life and about the inorga­ tions would) the professionals who make nic world from stellar galaxies to atoms. the concert bills. were convincingly explained or brilliantly In his early years Bush produced work foretold between the years 1844 and 1896 in the style of the fashionable avant garde, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels'. He influenced by the complex a-tonal experi­ joined the Communist party in 1935, by ments of European composers like Arnold way of the ILP and the Labour party. In the following year, he founded the Work­ I owe much, very much, ers' Music Association with whom - and probably my life to the with Tippett's help - he staged both the Pageant of Labour and, later, the Popular glorious Red Army Frontish Pageant of Co-Operation. Schoenberg, who had dispensed with the Tippett has gently accused his friend of old, familiar harmonic scale in favour of a measure of naivety. Certainly some of rigorous mathematical structures. This Bush's positions are in present terms start- was a problem for Bush since it was nec­ lingly uncomplicated by ideological qual­ Alan Bush essarily an elitist, academic style and had ifications: 'I owe much, very much, prob­ Alan Bush has had to wait long for recogni­ to square with his political convictions. ably my life to the glorious Red Army', 'I tion by the musical establishment. The The Dialectic for String Quartet shows that personally rejoice in the foundation of the flurry of attention which marked his 85th he was able in exceptional circumstances to German Democratic Republic'. These, birthday last December - a prestigious overcome these problems but by and large though, are not airy abstractions, nor Queen Elizabeth Hall concert, a Channel 4 he was obliged to look elsewhere, nearer to armchair preferences. Bush (and Tippett, film, two record albums - only served to home, for a music that would express both for all his qualms) saw Stalin's armies as underline the years of relative neglect. his desire for complexity and his political the only reliable bulwark against National Even so, it would be misleading and ideals. Where the 20th century avant garde Socialism; as for the GDR, it was only condescending to paint Bush as merely had wiped the slate clean and started afresh there that Bush was to be able to stage fully another alienated outsider, out of temper with a new palate of sounds Bush turned to his operas, Wat Tyler (1951), Men of with his times and with musical fashion. the popular songs of work and protest that Blackmoor (1956), The Sugar Reapers His relative obscurity - relative certainly to were the staple of working mens and (1966) and Joe Hill (1970). As always, his old friend Michael Tippett - has been womens' choirs. reality and practicality are his measures. in part willed, a direct product of his Tippet's A Child of Our Time about a Since he began to compose in 1915, long-standing political intransigence. Nazi atrocity is widely - and rightly - seen Bush has put opus numbers to over 100 However, for 53 years, Bush was professor as a masterpiece. It draws on a particular works, most of them seldom heard in of composition at the Royal Academy of moment and elevates it into something Britain. The 1949 'Nottingham' sym- Music and thus, by many standards, stood universal (or at least shareable). Bush, in closer to the musical establishment than writing his Lidice for unaccompanied chor­ might seem consistent with his political us three years later, was no less concerned convictions: he has been a lifelong member to register his horror at a modern atrocity, of the CP. this time the expunging of a Bohemian One probable cause of Bush's relative village by the Nazis in reprisal for the isolation has been the lack of any clear assassination of Heydrich. Bush, though, context for performance of his music. It consciously renounces any attempt to aes- fits no obvious category or tradition but theticise the event. He tries to become part March 1986 Marxism Today 41 phony, his second, is a major work that The decade before the war saw Tippett's the perenially recurring search for Tip­ belongs in the repertoire alongside better most directly political involvement in pett: all his subsequent works - notably his known symphonic cities, Paris, Linz, music-making. The only son of a some­ sequence of four great operas The Midsum­ Leningrad. And his Dialectic for string what unconventional middle-class family, mer Marriage (1955), King Priam (1962), quartet of 1929 is unquestionably one of Tippett remembers being part of a politi­ The Knot Garden (1970), and The Ice Break the foremost chamber works of the cen­ cised artistic generation following on the (1977), his Third Symphony (1972), and his tury, perfectly illustrating his conviction great disillusionment of the 1920s, a com­ most recent choral work, The Mask of Time that even non-vocal music can carry its mitment first demonstrated in teaching (1983) - have in one way or another message thematically as well as harmoni­ music at a work-camp for the unemployed returned to this quest for reconcilation, for cally and rhythmically. in Boosbeck, Yorkshire, in 1933, and the possibility of resolution and wholeness Alan Bush's isolation is not that of subsequently at Morley College in South emerging from the polarities and uncer­ extreme stylistic subjectivity, nor, to Bri­ London (he became head in 1940, serving tainties of the world around us. Tippett tain's credit, is it the result of open political until 1951), and as chorus master of the has spoken of his 'endless agnosticism' in censorship. In part, it has been deliberate, choirs of the Royal Arsenal Co-operative the face of these ambiguities, of his inabil­ a function of his unwillingness to com­ Society. In 1937, he contributed a piece ity 'to find satisfaction in the security of a promise on conditions of performance; in called Miners, with text by Judy Wogan, to traditional faith'. part it has been due to his abiding commit­ Bush's pageant of labour at Crystal Palace. In a fundamental sense, Tippett's be­ ment to real events over artistic generali­ A Trotskyite at this time, Tippett brief­ liefs and his musical procedures are iden­ ties. In large part, it has been due to the ly joined the Communist party in 1935, but tical. A wide and voracious reader, he was demanding and complex nature of the quickly left, having failed to convert his particularly influenced by Jung. Tippett's music itself. local group from their Stalinist bent. His commitment to exploring his great body of growing awareness of the path of both images and ideas has given rise to his most fascism and communism as the decade profound and original creations, just as his waned - 'I always knew that both Hitler absorption and remaking of the musical and Stalin were monsters, though one was heritage of Purcell, Beethoven, or Stra­ the enemy and the other was the ally' - led vinsky, blues, jazz or spirituals, has char­ him to drift away from specific political acterised his most significant musical ex­ affiliations, but not from strongly held plorations. It would be inaccurate to see Tippett's I always knew that both abandoment of a doctrinaire political Hitler and Stalin were stance in the late 1930s as a renunciation of the political realities of the outside world. monsters, though one was As a composer and librettist, as well as a the enemy and the other discursive writer, Tippett has continued to was the ally face up to those realities, seeking a solution within a vaster, more complex philo­ convictions. Tippett joined the Peace sophical framework than any political or Pledge Union in 1940 (and has been its religious commitment could subsume. chairperson since 1957); a passionately Where, as in The Vision of St. Augustine convinced pacifist. As a conscientious ob­ (1966), he has stood back from that social jector he was imprisoned for two months in and political ferment, it has been knowing­ Michael Tippett 1943.