The Correspondence of Alan Bush and John Ireland comes in the midst of a spate of collections of the letters of British composers. Also published recently have been Thomas Schuttenhelm's selection of Tippett's letters,Footnote ¹ the most recent volume of the Britten letters, and a new collection of Vaughan Williams's letters (the last two also reviewed in this issue). Set alongside these volumes on three of the most unquestionably significant twentieth-century British composers, the Bush–Ireland correspondence perhaps requires justification as more than a purely specialist interest. Ireland has received a certain amount of scholarly attention as a song composer and in Fiona Richards's major study of his music.Footnote ² Bush, on the other hand, is currently represented only by two volumes containing short essays and tributes and his wife's posthumously published biography, which contains a useful but unfortunately brief overview of his considerable output by Lewis Foreman.Footnote ³ Yet Bush has recently been the subject of renewed interest, with the foundation of a trust, a spate of new recordings, a historical study,Footnote ⁴ and several postgraduate studies in Britain and America. This growing interest is warranted. Bush's vast correspondence, deposited in the British Library after his death (and of which the Ireland letters form only a fraction), charts his engagement with a huge range of individuals as well as political and musical organisations all over the world. Moreover, in a post-Cold War world, one of the main difficulties in studying Bush's life and music – his radical and abiding commitment to communism – may be looked at afresh. Both Bush and Ireland felt overshadowed by more famous contemporaries: Bush by Britten and Tippett and Ireland by Vaughan Williams. Consequently, an important facet of this collection is the insight it can offer into an alternative strand of twentieth-century British music, while also casting light on aspects of the mainstream.

Rachel O'Higgins, Bush's elder daughter, has created a valuable resource through her minute attention to detail in the references, and the inclusion of a useful chronology and biographical notes as well as two short essays – by Ireland and Bush respectively – and a number of letters from Ireland to Bush's wife, Nancy. Although the essays are published elsewhere, Ireland's appeared in the obscure Tribute to Alan Bush on his Fiftieth Birthday, and the reprint is welcome. Both essays also contribute to one of the most successful aspects of the volume, an evocative sense of the context of life and works against which the correspondence took place. This is also evident in O'Higgins's abundant provision of additional details, such as pertinent excerpts from other correspondence and concert reviews of works cited in the text. A minor disadvantage of the extensive footnotes is that occasionally they render redundant the detailed background information provided at the start of each of the three sections of the book. On the other hand, this is an advantage for readers who may be reading letters selectively.

While O'Higgins is scrupulous in sourcing and elucidating obscure references by means of footnotes, she makes the conscious choice to refrain from extensive critical comment regarding the meaning and significance of the collection. In her Preface, for example, she declines to comment on the ‘psychological impact’ that the financing of Ireland's mortgage by the independently wealthy Bush might have had on the relationship between the two men (vii). There are also implications for understanding Ireland's relationship with Bush in the contradictory ways in which the former represented his music, both to Bush himself and to other friends and associates. For instance, Ireland wrote to Nancy Bush in February 1946 that his Concertino Pastorale (1939) ‘was written at a time when the Hitler menace was impending […] which no doubt influenced that curious opening and parts of the 1st movement – and in a way the earnest character of the slow movement’ (274). While this view echoes what he wrote to Harold Rawlinson in 1951 (88), Ireland told Bush in 1939 that the work was ‘something removed as far as possible from present strife & chaos’ and in June 1946 that it was ‘a little insipid jam with the modern pills […] [it has] a little light entertainment value!’ (199). It is intriguing that Ireland cites such serious impulses behind the work to Nancy and Rawlinson, yet trivializes it to Bush: was he failing to be honest with Bush, or was he embarrassed to reveal the seriousness of his intentions in the light of criticisms by Edward Clark (108) and Bush's own ‘poor opinion’ (134) of the final movement? On the other hand, in 1950 – by which time Bush was cultivating a more accessible, lyrical style – Ireland intimated to Bush a similar view of the work to that given to Rawlinson. These are points on which further editorial comment would have been welcome. However, O'Higgins's approach demonstrates the difference between a body of primary source material and a semi-biographical project, which a limited collection such as this cannot be expected to provide.

The letters are divided chronologically into three sections: ‘The Inter-War Years, 1927–38’, ‘The Gathering Storm and War, 1939–45’, and ‘The Post-War Years, 1946–61’. Part 1 begins as Bush was concluding his private studies with Ireland (1922–7). Although financial matters relating to Ireland's mortgage are a prominent feature of this section of the book, there are a number of interesting insights. Notwithstanding Bush's bankrolling of Ireland, the relationship at this stage – at least in the earlier letters – is very much that of master and admiring pupil. Bush writes with enthusiasm of Ireland's compositions and his, Bush's, frequent performances of them (22, 26, etc.), while Ireland offers advice (for example, 27–8) and often strong encouragement: ‘you are the only young Englishman with something really individual to say, & a technique adequate to say it’ (17). Yet there are also revealing hints of tension in their relationship. On several occasions Ireland strongly criticizes elements of Bush's musical development. Of Bush's Relinquishment Ireland writes that he is ‘very alarmed to find you going helter-skelter into this world of painful & sinister abstractions’ (16). In 1930 Ireland wrote that he was ‘rather dashed by [Bush's] attitude about “Mai-Dun”’, and although he considers his Piano Concerto to be his ‘best work’ (29), he writes to Bush:

These comments indicate a certain strain in the relationship resulting from the composers' different tastes and styles. Ireland's mixture of encouragement of Bush and concern at his cultivation of a more dissonant, experimental style also reveals something of his own ambivalence about the choices made by the new generation of composers and his own place in modern British music. He later writes that he ‘cannot help feeling that my work is not in the taste of the moment, & it is discouraging’ (43). On the other hand, in the very first letter of the collection, Ireland reveals his concern that Bush's Symphonic Impression would suffer from ‘the horrible public appreciation of any music which is new’ (15). Ireland's mixed feelings form an interesting counterpoint with the ambivalence Vaughan Williams felt towards the modernist style of certain works by one of his own star pupils, Elizabeth Maconchy.Footnote ⁵ Similarly, they provoke reflection on Ireland's difficult working relationship with Britten. The indication in these letters that Ireland was feeling left behind by other pupils, and alienated from their mode of expression, is a clear example of the ways in which this collection offers enriching insights into British music of the period.

In general, this collection as a whole does not provide a great deal of new information regarding the composition of particular works. Although Part 1 contains several letters concerning the gestation of Ireland's These Things Shall Be, the nitty-gritty of Bush's role in the composition – the orchestration and his providing Ireland with the melody of the ‘Internationale’ – is familiar from Longmire (reprinted in this collection, 278–80).Footnote ⁶ Like so much of this collection, the exchange over These Things Shall Be illuminates not only facets of the composers' relationship but also their wider concerns as composers and artists at the time, concerns that involved issues of politics and the moral responsibility of the composer and which come to the fore in Part 2 of the book. Ireland is persuaded to pursue These Things Shall Be (commissioned by the BBC to mark the coronation of George VI) because of the ‘moral effect’ (73) and the importance of the idea for ‘our convictions’. His last statement is especially noteworthy for its intimation of political ideals shared by Bush and himself. Indeed, he later writes to Bush seeking his opinions on the political situation: ‘perhaps you can enlighten me as to what this war is really about […]. I should very much like to have your views on the subject, as, honestly, I am quite in the dark’ (110). Following Bush's provision of several communist pamphlets, he writes again to state that he is ‘fully convinced of the truth of the views set forth’ (113). This brief correlation between their political sympathies is also revealed in Ireland's account of the composition of his Epic March and his intention of including not only a theme from These Things Shall Be because of its association ‘with the New Order of Society, for which (I hope) we are all now fighting’ (137) but also four bars of the ‘Internationale’. Although Ireland shied away from these inclusions following criticism, the letter indicates that his original aim was politically more subversive than the final product. He also still complained later that the work would not ‘cut much ice in this Fascism-ridden country’ (144).Footnote ⁷

If this letter indicates that Ireland's political rhetoric occasionally matched Bush's in its fervour, it underscores the real difference in their politics: where Ireland resolutely avoided direct political action, Bush acted and expressed himself in the strongest terms. One of the most characteristic letters of the collection is from Bush to Ireland in February 1941 (120–24). Ireland had refused to sign the People's Convention on the grounds of its unfair attack on the Government.Footnote ⁸ Bush, later summoned to an interview at the BBC, refused to withdraw his support, causing his music to be banned briefly by the corporation. Yet even Ireland's mild refusal provoked from Bush a passionate defence of the Convention and an attack on his colleague's actions:

Such rhetoric might reinforce the sense of Bush the dogmatic Communist, an unfortunate but enduring image of the composer not helped by the vehemence of many of his published statements.Footnote ⁹ Yet the end of this letter brings a surprising and revealing change of tone. Bush gives notice of a performance he has arranged of Ireland's Trio No. 3 in E minor, emphasizing that he ‘may never forget how much I owe you personally or cease to desire to forward your interests’ (124). This comment reveals something of the paradoxes in Bush's personality. He is politically committed to communist revolution, yet uses his wealth to support private ownership (Ireland's mortgage, separating radical politics from personal loyalties). Equally, the composers' very different styles (seen in the early letters) do not deflect Bush from an untiring promotion of Ireland's music. Once again this collection reveals something of the ambivalence of both composers' views, which, especially in Bush's case, is not always revealed in their own rhetoric.

Part 3, covering the post-war years, is less interesting than the previous sections. That these were years of decline for the increasingly infirm Ireland is apparent from the polite refusals of invitations to participate in various events. That both composers felt they had been left behind starts to emerge even in the later letters of Part 2 in their various comments on some of the leading composers of the day. In a letter from 1942 Ireland complains of a lack of repeat performances of his Sarnia and attributes what he sees as the BBC's favouring of Walton and Britten to ‘powerful backing’ by, respectively, the ‘aristocracy’ and ‘the Jews’ (141). This scurrilous and somewhat bizarre comment reflects Ireland's growing disaffection with public musical life in Britain. He later complained of a BBC ‘boycott’ which, O'Higgins reveals, was largely the result of his own awkwardness (224–6). Bush, too, is sometimes unreasonable. His earlier ‘eulogy’ of his friend Tippett (referred to by Ireland, 61–2) gives way to criticism of A Child of Our Time as ‘emotional but formless’Footnote ¹⁰ and accusations that Britten and Tippett had declared pacifism in order to evade military service (169–70). Bush also refers to a three-year dearth of broadcasts of his works from 1938 to 1941 as a ‘ban’, when in fact it was only during the brief furore over the People's Convention that Bush's music was officially banned (195–6). More reasonably, Bush's writings in the final period of the correspondence reveal his sense, like Ireland's, of being musically out of place in post-war Britain. In 1946 he feels that his latest works, ‘less dissonant […] than anything I have previously written’ (189), represent an ‘advance’, but conveys his wife's fears that he will be thought to be ‘softening’ (189). He later writes of finding himself ‘against the stream as I get more fanatically opposed to dodecaphonic music every day’ (264). On the other hand, the late letters crucially reveal that Bush was pursuing a very successful career in the Eastern Bloc, completing an extensive conducting tour of the Balkans (204–8) and receiving further operatic commissions and performances following the success in Weimar of Wat Tyler (240–41). Only one of Bush's four operas – all of which drew on different folk traditions and had socialist themes – was professionally staged in Britain, in a production mounted by his own organization, the Workers' Music Association. Looking back on Bush's career as a whole, Ireland best encapsulated his difficulties, writing of Bush's reputation for composing ‘rather formidable music […] or music with a political trend, which undoubtedly puts people off’ (193).

The Correspondence of Alan Bush and John Ireland offers perspectives beyond the rich portrait provided of the anxieties, jealousies, and successes of the two composers. Two fundamental musical concerns emerge from this collection. Firstly, the composers exhibit strong and ambivalent views on style and technique. Their fears of having become simply passé and their mixture of enthusiasm for and antagonism towards the kind of new music that challenges audiences testify to their engagement with one of the central concerns of British composers of this period. Secondly, the correspondence reveals the complexities that both men perceived in the moral and ethical responsibilities of the modern composer. In Ireland's case the matter of Epic March provides one example of the way he believed that he as an artist might ‘forward the ideals we have in mind’ (125), despite his avoidance of direct action. In the 1940s and beyond he continued to praise his protégé not just musically but for the ‘human and political significance’ of the Symphony in C (141) and his ‘valuable addition to the Art of the nation and the people’ (242, referring to Wat Tyler). Conversely Bush, who wore his heart on his sleeve where the political allegiances of his music were concerned, expresses many less high-minded concerns: his pride at the popular success of Wat Tyler (240) and the technical difficulties of composing opera (229). This collection presents two composers, Bush especially, who engaged with the problems that absorbed Britten, Tippett, and others of their generation, yet chose very different solutions. It also reveals the complex motivations behind the lives and works of two composers who can so easily be caricatured as straightforwardly conservative. The book provides a valuable resource for those exploring the concerns that affected a diverse range of British composers in the rapidly changing world of the mid-twentieth century.