David Hush FRSN
David Hush was born in Bristol, UK and was educated at Clifton College.
After completing degrees in Arts and Music at the University of Sydney, Hush was the first Australian applicant to be awarded a Graduate Fellowship in Music at Princeton. While at Princeton he studied with the influential composer and theorist Milton Babbitt, earning a Master of Fine Arts and a PhD. On completing his PhD Hush remained in Princeton until 1993, when he returned to Australia and took up a composer residency at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
As a theorist Hush was the first to recognise the relevance of physicist David Bohm’s ideas on the implicate order to music. In 1983 Hush published an article in Perspectives of New Music applying Bohm’s ideas to the analysis of a work by Babbitt.
Hush has written works spanning solo instrumental, chamber ensemble, choral and orchestral idioms. They have been performed, recorded and broadcast in North and South America, the UK, Europe, Israel, Australia and South Korea.
Hush has received fellowships and awards from — inter alia — Princeton University, the Hinrichsen Foundation, and the New Jersey State Council On the Arts. In addition, he has received the Ignaz Friedman Prize, was named the first recipient of the Schoenberg Award in 1984, and has received numerous awards from ASCAP.
Hush’s output falls into five categories.
The first is music written in the European tradition, represented by such works as the Cello Sonata, influenced by Beethoven, and the Prelude and Fugue in D minor for solo violin, written in the harmonic idiom of JS Bach.
Jewish vocal music, cantorial and secular, comprises the inspiration for the second group. Incantation and Elegy, each for solo violin, offer examples.
The third group is influenced by rāgas of North India and is represented by such works as Meditation and Rāga in B♭.
The fourth group consists of short pieces conceived and played in the jazz and blues tradition of African-American music.
The last group comprises experimental pieces such as Free Improvisation 18-09-22 for piano and Deconstructing Microtones, a piece in progress for alto recorder and electronics.
David Hush is an Associate Artist of the Australian Music Centre.