37 f Green Willowing
Song collector, morris dancer and composer George Butterworth died at the Somme 100 years ago. Derek Schofield recalls the loss.
four men, out of the seven who danced in the English Folk Dance Society’s morris side, who died at or near the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Perceval Lucas, George Wilkinson and Reginald Tiddy all died that summer, but it is the fourth dancer who died there, George Butterworth, whose loss was felt most keenly by the early folk song and dance revivalists – especially Cecil Sharp – as well as by the classical music enthusiasts. Like his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams, another folk song col- lector, Butterworth used the tunes he had collected as the basis for his compositions.
T George Sainton Kaye Butterworth was
born in 1885 in London, moved to York when his solicitor father was employed by
o mark the start of the cente- nary commemorations of the First World War, Jo Breeze’s fea- ture The Morris At War (fR372) included pen portraits of the
the North Eastern Railway, learned to play the piano, played cricket and was educat- ed at Eton before reading Classics at Trini- ty College, Oxford. This was the era of resurgence in English music – the English Musical Renaissance – with composers looking for inspiration in the English land- scape, folk songs, back to the Tudor com- posers and onwards to Purcell. The aim was to develop a distinctly English nation- al music. Butterworth was an enthusiast for new English music, and after gradua- tion rejected his father’s wish that he fol- low a law career, and instead became a music critic on The Times.
While he was still at Oxford, he came across folk song and joined the Folk Song Society in 1906. He could hardly have missed the higher public profile of folk song at the time: Cecil Sharp’s fight to have “genuine” folk songs included in the school music syl- labus was extensively reported in the
English Folk Dance Society vacation school participants, Stratford upon Avon, August 1914. George Butterworth second from left on back row. Apart from Cecil Sharp (centre, back row) and Margaret Mayne (far
national press, and he was supported by the rising star of classical music composition, Ralph Vaughan Williams. On a personal level, the likely trigger for his interest in hunting for songs was Francis Jekyll, a fel- low old Etonian and Oxford classics student, who had started folk song collecting in Herefordshire in 1905. Together, they returned to the county in 1906 and, perhaps at Folk Song Society luminary Lucy Broad- wood’s suggestion, Butterworth then start- ed collecting in Sussex, around the Horsham area. It was in Billingshurst that Butter- worth met farm labourer Job Cranstone and his wife Ellen Mary who sang him 29 songs, including The Banks Of Green Willow.
Sometimes accompanied by Jekyll, But- terworth explored several areas of West Sussex, including Midhurst and Pulborough, but he also collected in Norfolk and Suffolk, with both Jekyll and Vaughan Williams. In all, he collected over 300 folk songs.
left, back row), all the other dancers – who include George Wilson, Douglas Kennedy, James Patterson, Maud & Helen Karpeles – were under 30 years old.
Photo: courtesy Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
