Queer Places:
5 Driffield Terrace, York YO24 1EJ, UK
Eton College, Windsor, Windsor and Maidenhead SL4 6DW, UK
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
Radley College, Kennington Rd, Radley, Abingdon OX14 2HR
Kennington Rd, Abingdon, Radley, Abingdon OX14 2HR, UK
Thiepval Memorial
Thiepval, Departement de la Somme, Picardie, France
St Mary Churchyard
Deerhurst, Tewkesbury Borough, Gloucestershire, England
George
Sainton Kaye Butterworth,
MC (12 July 1885 – 5 August 1916) was an
English composer
who was best known for the orchestral idyll
The Banks of Green Willow and his song settings of
A.
E. Housman's
poems from
A Shropshire Lad. In the wake of the posthumous denigration of
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, more or less contemporaneous with the disgrace of
Oscar Wilde in
1895, certain English composers developed a keepsake mentality, frustrated yet
potent, that came to characterize a generations music. Three representatives
may be considered: Roger Quilter,
John Ireland, and
George Butterworth. Butterworth was probably homosexual, Ireland and Quitter
certainly were. None of the three found a longterm or stable sexual partner.
All of them excelled at composing songs, inscribing fulfillment in the
perfection of the small-scale and containable while counterbalancing that with
the powerful erotic yearning of the English lyric poetry they chose to set to
music.
Butterworth was born in
Paddington, London.[1]
Soon after his birth, his family moved to
York so that his
father Sir
Alexander Kaye Butterworth could take up an appointment as general manager
of the
North Eastern Railway, which was based there.
Their home was at Riseholme, a house on Driffield Terrace, which
later became part of the
Mount School. In 2016, the centenary year of his death on the Somme, the
York Civic Trust unveiled a blue plaque in his memory, at College House,
Driffield Terrace, part of the Mount School.
George received his first
music lessons
from his mother, who was a singer, and he began composing at an early age.
As a young boy, he played the organ for services in the chapel of his
preparatory school,
Aysgarth School, before gaining a scholarship to
Eton
College.[3]
He showed early musical promise at Eton, a "Barcarolle" for orchestra being
played during his time there (it is long since lost).[4]
Butterworth then went up to
Trinity College, Oxford, where he became more focused on music, becoming
President of the University Music Club.
He also made friends with the
folk song collector
Cecil
Sharp; the composer and folk song enthusiast
Ralph Vaughan Williams; the future Director of the
Royal College of Music,
Hugh Allen; and a
baritone
and future
conductor,
Adrian Boult. Butterworth and Vaughan Williams made several trips into the
English countryside to collect folk songs (Butterworth collected over 450
himself, many in
Sussex in 1907, and sometimes using a
phonograph) and the compositions of both were strongly influenced by what
they collected.
Butterworth was also an expert
folk
dancer, being particularly keen in the art of
morris dancing.
He was employed for a while by the
English Folk Dance and Song Society (of which he was a founder member in
1906) as a professional morris dancer, and was a member of the Demonstration
Team.
Upon leaving Oxford, Butterworth began a career in music, writing criticism
for The
Times, composing, and teaching at
Radley College,
Oxfordshire.
He also briefly studied
piano and
organ at the
Royal College of Music, where he worked with
Hubert Parry among others, though he stayed less than a year as the
academic life was not for him.
Vaughan Williams and Butterworth became close friends. It was Butterworth
who suggested to Vaughan Williams that he turn a
symphonic poem he was working on into his
London Symphony.
When the manuscript for that piece was lost (having been sent to Germany,
either to the conductor
Fritz
Busch or for engraving, just before the outbreak of war), Butterworth,
together with
Geoffrey Toye and the critic
Edward J. Dent, helped Vaughan Williams reconstruct the work.[7]
Vaughan Williams dedicated the piece to Butterworth's memory after his death.
At the outbreak of the
First
World War, Butterworth, together with several of his friends, including
Geoffrey Toye and
R.
O. Morris, joined the
British Army as a
private in the
Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, but he soon accepted a commission as a
subaltern
(2nd Lieutenant) in the 13th Battalion
Durham Light Infantry, and he was later temporarily promoted to
lieutenant.
He was known as G. S. Kaye-Butterworth in the Army.
Butterworth's letters are full of admiration for the ordinary
miners of
County Durham who served in his
platoon.
As part of
23rd Division, the 13th DLI was sent into action to capture the western
approaches of the village of
Contalmaison on
The Somme. Butterworth and his men succeeded in capturing a series of
trenches near
Pozières
on 16–17 July 1916, the traces of which can still be found within a small
wood. Butterworth was slightly wounded in the action. For his action Temporary
Lt. George Butterworth, aged 31, was awarded the
Military Cross, gazetted 25 August 1916, though he did not live to receive
it.[8]
The
Battle of the Somme was now entering its most intense phase. On 4 August,
23rd Division was ordered to attack a communications trench known as Munster
Alley that was in German hands. The soldiers dug an assault trench and named
it 'Butterworth Trench' in their officer's honour. In desperate fighting
during the night of 4–5 August, and despite
friendly fire from Australian artillery, Butterworth and his miners
captured and held on to Munster Alley, albeit with heavy losses. At 04:45 on 5
August, amid frantic German attempts to recapture the position, Butterworth
was shot through the head by a
sniper. His
body was hastily buried by his men in the side of the trench, but was never
recovered for formal reburial following the fierce bombardments of the final
two years of conflict.
When his brigade commander,
Brigadier General Page Croft, wrote to Butterworth's father to inform him
of his death, it transpired that he had not known that his son had been
awarded the Military Cross.
Similarly, the brigadier was astonished to learn that Butterworth had been one
of the most promising English composers of his generation.
Brigadier Croft wrote that Butterworth was "A brilliant musician in times of
peace, and an equally brilliant soldier in times of stress."[9]
There is confusion about exactly what award(s) Butterworth received. It is
said that he won the MC twice, but this is incorrect. This misunderstanding
may have arisen because Butterworth's bravery was regularly in evidence during
the Somme campaign. Firstly, he was
mentioned in despatches early in July, and was then recommended for the MC
"for conspicuous gallantry in action" on 9 July at Bailiff Wood, then again –
successfully – "for commanding his company with great ability and coolness"
when wounded on 16–17 July. Brigadier Page-Croft also mentioned to
Butterworth's father that he had 'won' the medal again on the night he died.
However, the Military Cross was not awarded posthumously at the time, and so
he could never have been awarded it twice.
Butterworth's body was never recovered (although his unidentified remains
may well lie at nearby
Pozières Memorial, a
Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery), and his name appears on the
Thiepval Memorial.
George Butterworth's The Banks of Green Willow has become synonymous
for some with the sacrifice of his generation and has been seen by some as an
anthem for all 'Unknown Soldiers'. Sir Alexander Butterworth erected a plaque
at
St Mary's Priory Church, Deerhurst, Gloucestershire in memory of his son
and of his nephew,
Hugh, who died at
Loos in 1915. (The Rev. George Butterworth, the composer's grandfather,
had been vicar of St Mary's in the previous century.)
Sir Alexander also arranged the printing in 1918 of a memorial volume in his
son's memory. Almost all Butterworth's manuscripts were left to Vaughan
Williams, after whose death
Ursula Vaughan Williams lodged the original works in the
Bodleian, Oxford, and the folk song collection with the
EFDSS.
My published books:
BACK TO HOME PAGE
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Butterworth
- Encyclopedia of Gay Histories and Cultures
George Haggerty
Routledge, Nov 5, 2013