Carl Busch

His students included Florence Price, William Dawson, and Robert Russell Bennett.

Carl Busch studied at Royal Danish Academy of Music. Training under Johan Peter Emilius Hartmann, Valdemar Tofte and Jørgen Ditleff Bondesen is recorded. The recorded working language is Danish. Employment is recorded with University of Missouri–Kansas City. Distinctions recorded are Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog.

• Name — Carl Busch • Birthplace — Bjerre, Denmark • Born — 29 March 1862 • Died — 19 December 1943 • Place of death — Kansas City, Missouri, USA

Carl Busch was born in Bjerre, Denmark to George Ludwig Busch, a lawyer, and Ida Busch. Busch was the youngest of five children. He learned to play the violin, piano, flute, and cello. He first attended the University of Copenhagen before enrolling at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, where he studied with Niels Wilhelm Gade and Johan Peter Emilius Hartmann, and worked under Johan Svendsen. Busch received a scholarship in 1885 to study at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, where he also played with the Brussels Symphony Orchestra. In 1886, he left for Paris, where he played with Benjamin Godard's orchestra and became acquainted with Charles Gounod and Camille Saint-Saëns.

In 1886, the Danish vice-consul in Kansas City and former music publisher Thyge Skogaard attempted to recruit a string quartet to take up residence in Kansas City. After losing an opportunity for an engagement Spain in the summer of 1886, Busch formed the Gade Quartet with other members of the Danish Royal Opera House Orchestra to accept Skogaard’s proposal. While the quartet gave numerous concerts, as most performances were unpaid or underpaid, it disbanded months later. Busch conducted the Philharmonic Choral Society of Kansas City, and later became the founding music director of the original Kansas City Symphony Orchestra in 1911. While the Symphony disbanded in 1918, Busch remained active as a composer and continued to guest conduct.

Busch married pianist Sallie Saltenstall Simpson Smith on December 27, 1888. After their marriage, Sallie Smith Busch went on to study at Leipzig Conservatory with Carl Reinecke for four years, later returning to Kansas City where she established a reputation as a concert pianist and piano teacher. Since 1918, Busch spent many summer months in Cape Cod, the Ozarks, and Battle Creek, Michigan. In his later years, Busch mainly visited Battle Creek as a guest of one of his former pupils, who provided him with a cabin where he composed.

Sallie Smith Busch died in 1939. Busch died in Kansas City in 1943.

• Illustration — Busch (third from left) in 1927 on a visit to teach during the summer term at Brigham Young University. William F. Hanson (far left) was another composer to adopt Native American elements in his music. Busch was especially noted for his works based on themes from the Western United States, and he would frequently incorporate American Indian themes into his music. He set many tribal songs as solos, and reworked some into larger pieces such as the Four Indian Tribal Melodies for string orchestra, based upon the music of the Omaha and Chippewa. Other works, such as A Chant from the Great Plains for band, are more generically "Western" in their inspiration. Among Busch's other works was the suite Ozarka, about the Ozarks in southern Missouri.