As a classical music radio host of many years, it’s easy to fall back on the same biographical details whenever I come to announce a given composer’s works. This is especially true when the composer’s life contains some particularly lurid or poignant detail.
But is it really fair to define someone by the manner of his or her death? After all, composers lived rounded lives like the rest of us, full of joys and sorrows. There must be some laughter even in a life weighted with misery, and tears in the make-up of any clown.
So it was with George Butterworth. If we hear anything at all in the minute or two it takes to set up the broadcast of one of his works, it’s that Butterworth was cut down by a sniper during the Battle of the Somme at the age of 31. Of course, it doesn’t help that his compositions make one’s heart ache from their exquisite beauty.
In reading up on Butterworth in advance of celebrating the anniversary of his birth yesterday, I stumbled across this page and sat transfixed, as I viewed for the first time rare footage of him folk dancing with Cecil Sharp. It put a human face on this composer every bit as poignant as the idea of him being cut down in his prime. It’s especially amusing to see the two men get tangled up in their choreography and then continue on their merry way.
https://www.warcomposers.co.uk/butterworthbio
If you’re unfamiliar with Butterworth’s music, here are a few examples. Those inspired by the poems of A.E. Housman are especially poignant.
The Banks of Green Willow:
A Shropshire Lad (orchestral rhapsody):
A Shropshire Lad (song cycle):
PHOTO: Butterworth the morris dancer (second from left)