John Buller (composer)

John Buller (7 February 1927, London – 12 September 2004, Sherborne, Dorset) was a British composer.

Career

John Buller was born in London. His musical career began at St Matthew's, Westminster, where he was a chorister. Although the BBC accepted a work of his in 1946, he became an architectural surveyor. He returned to music in his thirties, taking his BMus in 1964. He gave up his surveying work in the 1970s and from then was a full-time, professional composer.

Perhaps his best known work is Proença (1977) for electric guitar, mezzo-soprano and orchestra, which was selected by the 1978 International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. Other works include The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies (1978), The Theatre of Memory (1981), the opera BAKXAI (1992), Bacchae Metres (1993) and Illusions (1997).

After his death in 2004, BBC Radio 3's contemporary music programme Hear and Now devoted an episode to Buller's music.

Selected list of works

• The Cave (1970)
• Two Night Pieces from Finnegans Wake (1971)
• Finnegans Floras (1972)
• Le Terrazze (1974)
• Proenca, for mezzo, electric guitar and orchestra (1977)
• The Ballad of Mick, Nick and the Maggies (1978)
• Theatre of Memory, for orchestra (1981)
• Bakxai (The Bacchae) (1991-2)
• Bacchae Metres (1993)
• Illusions (1997)

Personal life

One of Buller's sons is the British record producer Ed Buller.