George Butterworth

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George Sainton Kaye Butterworth MC (born July 12, 1885 in London , † August 5, 1916 in Pozières , Somme ) was an English composer.

Life

George Butterworth was born into a musical family that moved to Yorkshire in the early years of his life . He received his first music lessons from his mother, a singer. He started composing early. However, his father Alexander Butterworth (later General Manager of the North Eastern Railway ) had provided him with training as a lawyer. So he was first sent to Eton College in Eton and then studied at Trinity College in Oxford .

There he concentrated increasingly on music and met the folk song collector Cecil Sharp and the composer and folk song enthusiast Ralph Vaughan Williams . Butterworth and Vaughan Williams made several trips to rural England to collect folk songs, which both composers stylistically influenced. Butterworth was particularly drawn to folk dancing and conducted research on it.

Vaughan Williams and Butterworth became close friends. At Butterworth's suggestion, Vaughan Williams reworked a symphonic poem into his 2nd symphony (the London Symphony ). When the score of the symphony was lost in Germany at the beginning of the First World War, Butterworth reconstructed it from the orchestral parts. Vaughan Williams dedicated the work to him posthumously.

After graduating from Oxford, Butterworth began a career as a musician, wrote reviews for The Times , composed and taught at Radley College in Oxfordshire . He also briefly studied at the Royal College of Music in London, where he was taught by Hubert Parry , among others .

Thiepval memorial near Pozières

After the outbreak of World War I, Butterworth enlisted for military service. He was killed in the Battle of the Somme near Pozières in 1916, at the age of 31, when he was shot by a German sniper. His body was never found, only his name is on the Thiepval monument near the Somme. This wiped out one of the brilliant hopes of 20th century English music. Posthumously he was awarded the Military Cross .

plant

Little of Butterworth's music has survived because he self-critically destroyed many of his works before he was drafted. Among what remained, the best known are his compositions on AE Housman's poetry collection A Shropshire Lad (1911/12). Many English composers of the day set poems by Housman to music, but none of these compositions achieved the popularity of Butterworth's two song cycles (for voice and piano). They are seldom performed in their entirety these days, but six songs are often performed together, with Is My Team Plowing? the most famous is. Another, Lovliest of Trees , is the basis of an orchestral rhapsody that was composed as a counterpart in 1912 and was also named A Shropshire Lad . Parallels between the death-dealing poetry A Shropshire Lad , which emerged in connection with the Boer War , and Butterworth's death soon thereafter in World War I are often pointed out.

Butterworth's only orchestral works can be heard occasionally - in addition to the aforementioned rhapsody A Shropshire Lad (1912), Two English Idylls from 1911 and his last, perhaps best work, The Banks of Green Willow from 1913.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Plaster: History of Sniping and Sharpshooting . Paladin Press, 2008, ISBN 9781610047104 . P. 329

literature

  • Michael Barlow: Whom the gods love. The life and music of George Butterworth . Toccata Press, London 1997, ISBN 0-907689-42-6 .
  • Guido Heldt : The national as a problem in English music of the early 20th century. Clay poems by Granville Bantock, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Edward Elgar, George Butterworth, Gerald Finzi and Gustav Holst . Wagner, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-88979-099-6 . Therein Chapter V: The Irony of Beauty: George Butterworth and "A Shropshire Lad" , pp. 531-634.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Butterworth, George
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Butterworth, George Sainton Kaye (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English composer
DATE OF BIRTH July 12, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH August 5, 1916
Place of death Pozières