The choral music of Anthony Burgess and a conductor's study of four Anthony Burgess choral pieces

Abstract

Anthony Burgess, primarily known for his literary career, was also a prolific composer. Composition and music was his first love and passion. At the present time, there is no study specifically on the choral music of Anthony Burgess and there have been only a few performances of his music. The primary goal of this paper is to consider the choral compositions of Anthony Burgess. In a comparison of the works list produced by Anthony Burgess in This Man and Music, a works list complied by Paul Phillips and the inventory of holdings in the Burgess collection at the Ransom Center, there are twenty-three known choral compositions. Of these twenty-three pieces, the scores of eleven pieces are held in the collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. This paper will present an overview of Burgess’s extant choral music housed at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin along with individual analytical studies of the four complete choral pieces held at the Ransom Center.