Adrian Cruft

British Composer (1921 - 1987)

Adrian Francis Cruft (10 February 1921 – 20 February 1987) was a British composer.

Cruft, the son of the double-bassist Eugene Cruft was educated at Westminster Abbey Choir School, Westminster School, and as a Boult conducting scholar at the Royal College of Music from 1938, completing his studies there briefly in 1946-1947 after service in World War II. He was a composition student of Gordon Jacob and Edmund Rubbra but also studied double bass with his father. Cruft became chairman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain 1966.^[1]

Cruft, called a "performers' composer" by Roderick Swanston in an article in The Musical Times a couple of years after his death was, as a young chorister at Westminster Abbey, influenced by the revival of Tudor music and later by the counterpoint of Bach.^[2] Grove's music dictionary calls his music "diatonic, firmly based in tradition and generally straightforward in idiom". He composed church music as well as orchestral works and chamber music.^[3]

Notes

^ Roderick Swanston, "The music of Adrian Cruft", The Musical Times, 1991, p. 119-123
^ Roderick Swanston, "The music of Adrian Cruft", The Musical Times, 1991, p. 119
^ Hugh Cole & John Cruft, "Cruft, Adrian (Francis)", Grove Music Online Archived 16 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 3 May 2006).

References

Cole, Hugh & Cruft, John, "Cruft, Adrian (Francis)", Grove Music Online Archived 16 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 3 May 2006).
Rubbra, Edmund, "The music of Adrian Cruft", The Musical Times, 1969, p. 822-825.
Swanston, Roderick, "The music of Adrian Cruft", The Musical Times, 1991, p. 119-123.

External links

Adrian Cruft's papers are held in the archives of the Royal College of Music: Adrian Cruft's papers in the AIM25 database (Archives in London and the M25 area).