Adrian Francis Cruft (10 February 1921 - 20 February 1987) was a British composer.
Cruft, the son of the double-bassist Eugene Cruft was educated at Westminster Abbey Choir School, Westminster School, and as a Boult conducting scholar at the Royal College of Music from 1938, completing his studies there briefly in 1946-1947 after service in World War II. He was a composition student of Gordon Jacob and Edmund Rubbra but also studied double bass with his father. Cruft became chairman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain 1966.[1]
Cruft, called a "performers' composer" by Roderick Swanston in an article in The Musical Times a couple of years after his death was, as a young chorister at Westminster Abbey, influenced by the revival of Tudor music and later by the counterpoint of Bach.[2] Grove's music dictionary calls his music "diatonic, firmly based in tradition and generally straightforward in idiom". He composed church music as well as orchestral works and chamber music.[3]