23 Facts About George Butterworth

George Butterworth was awarded the Military Cross for his gallantry during the fighting at Pozieres in the First World War, and died in the Battle of the Somme.

George Butterworth received his first music lessons from his mother, who was a singer, and he began composing at an early age.

George Butterworth showed early musical promise at Eton, a "Barcarolle" for orchestra being played during his time there.

George Butterworth then went up to Trinity College, Oxford, where he became more focused on music, becoming President of the University Music Club.

George Butterworth 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.

George Butterworth was an expert folk dancer, being particularly keen in the art of morris dancing.

George Butterworth was employed for a while by the English Folk Dance and Song Society as a professional morris dancer, and was a member of the Demonstration Team.

George Butterworth 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.

George Butterworth's letters are full of admiration for the ordinary miners of County Durham who served in his platoon.

George Butterworth's name had previously been brought to notice for good and gallant work.

George Butterworth's 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.

Similarly, the brigadier was astonished to learn that George Butterworth had been one of the most promising English composers of his generation.

George Butterworth's body was never recovered, and his name appears on the Thiepval Memorial.

Sir Alexander George 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.

George Butterworth's name is one of the 38 on the War Memorial at the Royal College of Music.

Almost all George 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.

George Butterworth did not write a great deal of music, and before and during the war he destroyed many works he did not care for, lest he should not return and have the chance to revise them.

Many English composers of George Butterworth's time set Housman's poetry, including Ralph Vaughan Williams.

In 1911 and 1912, George Butterworth wrote eleven settings of Housman's poems from A Shropshire Lad.

George Butterworth used no known folk tunes in the songs, although one was said to be based on a folk tune that has defied identification.

At this stage, George Butterworth still had not completed "On the idle hill of summer" and did not do so until he was living at Cheyne Gardens in London.

The orchestral version was in fact the last music George Butterworth worked on before leaving for France, and shows the composer's familiarity with Vaughan Williams' style, as well as with the music of Wagner, Elgar and Debussy.

George Butterworth showed real talent that might have flourished but for his early death.