A Shropshire Lad

George Butterworth was born in London on 12th July, 1885. His father, a London solicitor, moved to York, where George was brought up, to become General Manager of the North Eastern Railway. Butterworth was educated at Eton, Trinity College, Oxford and, for a short time, the Royal College of Music where he studied with the Director, Hubert Parry. Although he read Greats at Oxford, music became increasingly more important. His friendship with Vaughan Williams and Cecil Sharp no doubt strengthened the interest in folk songs which is so apparent in his compositions. His work is of the highest quality; simple yet profound; exquisitely crafted and deeply moving. How much he would have contributed to music had he lived longer will never be known. On the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he joined the Durham Light Infantry as a Lieutenant in the 13th Battalion. During his year in the trenches, he was mentioned in dispatches for outstanding courage, was awarded the Military Cross for his defence of a trench that was subsequently named after him and led a raid during the Battle of the Somme. The raid was successful but Butterworth was killed by a sniper's bullet on 5th August, 1916. His memorial is at Thiepval.

Although many English composers were drawn to the poems of A.E. Housman, few caught the spirit of his poetry like Butterworth. It was almost prophetic that Housman's work, with its undercurrent of death and the pointless nature of war, should have attracted Butterworth. The beautifully crafted rhapsody, A Shropshire Lad, is almost entirely based on Butterworth's setting of Housman's Loveliest of Trees, the first of eleven Housman songs. Kenneth Loveland's sleeve notes for an early recording state: "The piece was written in 1912, first performed under the great Nikisch in 1913 at the Leeds Festival, and can justifiably be thought of as a small-scale masterpiece capturing as it does the pastoral environment and regretful sadness of Housman's poems". Based on a melancholy minor string chord, the violas and clarinets develop a motif of utter poignancy. The orchestration is generally sparse making the occasional welling up of emotion the more meaningful. With just a brief quote on the flute from With Rue my Heart is Laden, the last of the eleven songs, the music ends as it starts - a short journey of utmost beauty and meaning. The lines of Loveliest of Trees perfectly express the mood.