John Buller was a British composer.

Career

John Buller's musical career began at St Matthew's

St Matthew's

The St Matthew's estate is an area of inner city Leicester. It lies immediately to the northeast of the city centre and is bounded by the A594 ring road to the southwest, the Belgrave Road to the northwest and Humberstone Road to the southeast...

, Westminster

City of Westminster

The City of Westminster is a London borough occupying much of the central area of London, England, including most of the West End. It is located to the west of and adjoining the ancient City of London, directly to the east of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and its southern boundary...

, where he was a chorister. Although the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 accepted a work of his in 1946, he became an architectural

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

 surveyor. He returned to music in his thirties, taking his BMus in 1964. He gave up his surveying work for good in the 1970s and was from then on a professional composer.

Perhaps his best known work is Proença (1977) for electric guitar

Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

, mezzo-soprano

Mezzo-soprano

A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...

 and orchestra

Orchestra

An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...

, which was selected by the 1978 International Rostrum of Composers in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. 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

BBC Radio 3

BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...

's contemporary music programme Hear and Now devoted an episode to Buller's music.

Personal life

One of Buller's sons is the British record producer

Record producer

A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...

 Ed Buller

Ed Buller

Ed Buller is a British record producer and former musician. He primarily works with Australian and British bands like Suede, Pulp, The Raincoats....

.