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Scan 571
Grove's Dictionary of music and musicians, 1927
26 lines. Read by computer on 5 September 2026. Printed page 503. See the scan on archive.org.
1Sept. 1, 1820; d. Harrogate, Aug. 2, 1892), organist and conductor, studied under Cipriani Potter, and succeeded S. S. Wesley in 1849 as organist of Leeds Parish Church, a post he occupied till 1880.
3His claim to notice rests chiefly on the important share he took in directing and improving the choral music for which the West Riding of Yorkshire is famous. He was conductor and chorus-master of many Yorkshire societies, in York, Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Halifax, Barnsley, Harrogate, Holmfirth, Malton and elsewhere. He was also chorus-master to the first Leeds Festival, in 1858, and received the same appointment for the abortive festival of 1861, and again when the festivals were resumed in 1874, but soon resigned the position, in consequence of differences of opinion with the committee. His most important work was perhaps in connexion with the Bradford Festival Choral Society, which he trained and conducted from 1878–87, an office which included the preparation of works for the Bradford subscription concerts founded and conducted for many years by Hallé. The essential feature of his method was his careful attention to vocal phrasing, by which he added greatly to the artistic refinement of Yorkshire choruses.
5H. T.
7BUSAUNE, an old name for trombone.
9BUSBY, THOMAS (b. Westminster, Dec. 1755; d. Pentonville, May 28, 1838), organist and composer, the son of a coach-painter.
11After an unsuccessful attempt to get him into the Westminster Abbey choir, he was placed under Champness for singing and Knyvett for harpsichord. In the summer of 1769 he sang at Vauxhall at a weekly salary of ten guineas. On the breaking of his voice in the same year, he was articled for three years to Battishill, and for some time after the expiration of his articles devoted himself to composition and musical literature, acting as parliamentary reporter to the London Courant, and contributing musical criticisms to the European Review and other periodicals. He worked at a setting of Pope’s ‘Messiah’ for some years, and it was produced in 1799 with considerable success as ‘The Prophecy.’ About 1786 he was appointed organist of St. Mary’s, Newington, and in the same year collaborated with Arnold in bringing out a Musical Dictionary. In 1798 he was elected organist of St. Mary Woolnoth. After the performance of his oratorio, he set to work on various odes by Pope and Gray, and Ossian’s ‘Comala’; in 1800 he wrote music for a version of Kotzebue’s ‘Joanna,’ and a so-called secular oratorio, ‘Britannia,’ was sung at Covent Garden, with Mara in the principal part. In June 1801 he took the degree of Mus.D. at Cambridge. In 1802 he wrote music to Holcroft’s ‘Tale of Mystery,’ and in the following year to Miss Porter’s ‘Fair Fugitives.’ His last dramatic work was the music to Lewis’s ‘Rugantino,’ 1805. He was a man of great industry, and, besides the works enumerated, wrote and published the following:
13The Age of Genius, a satirical poem, 1785; Dictionary of Music, 1786, etc.; The Divine Harmonist, 1788; Melodia Britannica, 1790; The Monthly Musical Journal (four numbers), 1801; a translation of Lucretius, 1813; A Grammar of Music, 1818; A History of Music (compiled from Burney and Hawkins), 2 vols. 8vo, 1819; Concert-Room and Orchestra Anecdotes, 3 vols. 12mo, 1825; A Musical Manual, or Technical Directory, 1828. (Dict. of Living Authors, 1816; Busby, Hist. of Music; Private Sources.)
15E. F. R.; addns. and corr. from D.N.B.
17BUSCH, (1) FRITZ (b. Siegen, Westphalia, Mar. 13, 1890), eldest son of the violin-maker Wilhelm Busch, conductor.
19At 5 years old Busch received his first piano lessons, and at 7 he began to appear at concerts. He attended the gymnasium at Siegen and at Siegburg (Rhineland), to which place his parents moved in 1902. At the same time he became efficient upon most of the orchestral instruments. In 1906 he went to the Conservatoire at Cologne, where he was a pupil of Fritz Steinbach for conducting, of Karl Boettcher and L. Uzielli for piano, of Otto Klauwell for theory and composition. In 1909 he went to Riga as conductor and chorus director of the ‘Stadttheater’; in the summer months of 1910–12 he was director of the concerts at Bad Pyrmont (where he conducted in 1911 the Blüthner orchestra from Berlin); in the winter of 1911–12 he conducted the choir of the Musikverein in Gotha. He made winter concert tours as a pianist. In 1912 Busch succeeded Eberhard Schwickerath as director of music at Aachen, and in that position he directed the Aachen Gesangverein, the town orchestra, and the people’s concerts. After a short period of war service he again took up his post at Aachen. Busch has a close sympathy for Reger’s art, and he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra at the Reger Festival at Jena in June 1918. In the same month he succeeded Max Schillings first as conductor, then as general musical director of the Stuttgart opera. In 1922 he succeeded Fritz Reiner as general musical director of the State opera in Dresden. Busch ranks as one of the most distinguished of living German opera and concert conductors.
21(2) ADOLF GEORG WILHELM (b. Siegen, Westphalia, Aug. 8, 1891), younger brother of Fritz, is an excellent violinist, leader of his own string quartet, and a composer.
23In 1902 he entered the Conservatoire in Cologne, where his teachers were Willy Hess and Bram Eldering, and where Fritz Steinbach took special notice of him. In 1908 he became a composition pupil of Hugo Grüters in Bonn, whose son-in-law he became in 1913.
25Max Reger and Busch were associated together from 1907 onwards; Reger liked to produce his chamber music with Busch. In
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