Music

Buller, John

John Buller was born in London in 1927. He was a chorister at St Matthews, Westminster, and had a musical childhood. In 1946 he had an early work accepted by the BBC but decided against a career in music and became an architectural surveyor. It was not until he was over thirty that he resumed serious musical studies. From 1959 he studied with Anthony Milner, taking his BMus (London) in 1964. In 1965 he joined the MacNaghten Concerts Committee and was its chairman 1971-2. During the early 1970s he finally gave up his surveying work and in 1975-6 he was composer-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh, as holder of the visiting Forman Fellowship. In 1985-6 he was composer-in-residence at Queens University, Belfast.

In recent decades his work has received many broadcasts and performances, his fame rising meteorically in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the appearance of two large works for orchestra, 'Proença' and 'The Theatre of Memory.'.'Proença,' a commission for the Proms Jubilee season in 1977, was selected by the 1978 International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. It has since been heard in some twenty-five countries, and is available on CD made by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mark Elder on the Unicorn Kanchana label. In 1978 'The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies' based on part of James Joyce's 'Finnegan's Wake' was staged by the BBC at the Round House. 'The Theatre of Memory,' commissioned by the BBC for the 1981 Proms, was also selected by the International Rostrum of Composers (1982).

BAKXAI was his first opera, and it was premièred in 1992 by the English National Opera, controversially sung in the original ancient Greek. It spawned the orchestral work 'Bacchae Metres' heard at the Proms in 1993. 'Illusions' for Symphony Orchestra was first performed in the 1997 Cheltenham International Festival by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Vassily Sinaisky. He is currently working on a piece for tenor and instrumental ensemble based on poems by Osip Mandelstam. His twin fascinations of James Joyce and Greek theatre have formed the backbone of his oeuvre.

For more information on John Buller and his catalog, visit the UK Music site.
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