Butterworth, George
Butterworth, George (1885–1916). English composer and one of countless examples of the pity and waste of war. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Oxford, Butterworth was a leading member of a group of musicians, including Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams, interested in English folk-song. His compositions were few and small scale, but Butterworth developed a distinctive voice, with a full and at times lush orchestration in his idylls A Shropshire Lad (1912) and The Banks of Green Willow (1913). In his setting for Housman's poem ‘The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair’, Butterworth paid moving tribute to ‘the lads who will die in their glory and never be old’. At the outbreak of war in 1914 he joined up, was awarded the MC, and died in action on the Somme on 5 August 1916. Vaughan Williams dedicated to his memory the Second (‘London’) Symphony.
J. A. Cannon
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Butterworth, George
