Bliss, Sir Arthur Edward Drummond

Bliss, Sir Arthur Edward Drummond (1891-1975), British composer. Born in London, he studied under the British composers Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. He experimented with unusual combinations of instruments and voices in such pieces as Rhapsody (1919), for soprano, tenor, flute, English horn, string quartet, and double bass in which the voice has no text but vocalizes on a single syllable. His Colour Symphony—in which the four movements represent characteristics associated with purple, red, blue, and green respectively—was chosen by Elgar for performance at the 1922 Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester. Later he settled into the pastoral idiom that was the dominant stylistic force in English music in the first half of the 20th century, as evidenced by his Music for Strings of 1935. Other works include the scores for the ballets Checkmate (1937) and Adam Zero (1946), the film score for Things to Come (1935, based on the story by H. G. Wells), and the television opera Tobias and the Angel (1958). He was made Master of the Queen's Music in 1953.