Editing Alan Bush (section)

===Assessment===
In the 1920s it appeared that Bush might emerge as Britain's foremost pianist, after his studies under the leading teachers of the day, but he turned to composition as his principal musical activity.<ref name= Obit/>  In Foreman's summary he is "a major figure who really straddles the century as almost no other composer does". He remained a pianist of consequence, with a strong and reliable, if heavy, touch.<ref name= ODNB/><ref>Foreman, pp. 98–99</ref>

Joanna Bullivant, writing in ''Music and Letters'', maintains that in his music Bush subordinated all ideas of personal expression to the ideology of Marxism.<ref>{{Cite journal|last= Bullivant|first= Joanna|title= Modernism, Politics, and Individuality in 1930s Britain: The Case of Alan Bush|url= https://muse.jhu.edu/article/363066/pdf|journal= Music and Letters|volume= 90|issue= 3|date= August 2009|pages= 432–52|doi= 10.1093/ml/gcp051|s2cid= 144687825}} {{subscription required}}</ref> The critic [[Hugo Cole]] thought that, as a composer, Bush came close to [[Paul Hindemith]]'s ideal: "one for whom music is felt as a moral and social force, and only incidentally as a means of personal expression".<ref>{{cite news|last= Cole|first= Hugo|title= Wigmore Hall: Alan Bush|newspaper= The Guardian|date= 19 January 1970|page= 8|id= {{ProQuest|185422901}}}} {{subscription required}}</ref> The composer [[Wilfrid Mellers]] credits Bush with more than ideological correctness; while remaining faithful to his creed even when it was entirely out of fashion, he "attempt[ed] to re-establish an English tradition meaningful to his country's past, present and future".<ref>{{cite web|author-link= Wilfrid Mellers|last= Mellers|first= Wilfrid|title= Alan Bush and the English Tradition|url= http://www.alanbushtrust.org.uk/articles/article_wmellers.asp?room=Articles|publisher= The Alan Bush Music Trust|access-date= 30 June 2017}} Originally published in the Trust's ''Clarion'' magazine, August 1998.</ref> Hall describes Bush as  "a key figure in the democratisation of art in Britain, achieving far more in this regard than his pedagogic, utopian patrons and peers, the labour romantics."<ref>{{cite web|last= Hall|first= Duncan|title= More Than a Pleasant Way to Pass the Time? Alan Bush and Socialist Music Between the Wars (book preview)|url= http://www.alanbushtrust.org.uk/articles/article_dhall.asp?room=Articles|publisher= The Alan Bush Music Trust|access-date= 2 July 2017}}</ref>

The music critic Colin Mason described Bush's music thus:<blockquote>His range is wide, the quality of his music consistently excellent. He has the intellectual concentration of Tippett, the easy command and expansiveness of Walton, the nervous intensity of Rawsthorne, the serene leisureliness of Rubbra ... He is surpassed only in melody, as are the others, by Walton, but not even by him in harmonic richness, nor by Tippett in contrapuntal originality and the expressive power of rather austere musical thought, nor by Rawsthorne in concise, compelling utterance and telling invention, nor by Rubbra in handling large forms well.<ref>{{cite web|first= Colin|last= Mason|title= Alan Bush – An Appreciation|url= http://www.alanbushtrust.org.uk/articles/article_jamis.asp?room=Articles|publisher= The Alan Bush Music Trust|access-date= 30 June 2017}} Quoted from a programme note for the Alan Bush and Aaron Copland Centenary Focus Concert, Purcell Room, 3 April 2000</ref></blockquote>