George Butterworth

English composer best known for his tone poem 'The Banks of Green Willow' and his settings of [a=Alfred E. Housman]'s poems from 'A Shropshire Lad.' (July 12, 1885 - August 5, 1916).

While attending Trinity College in Oxford for law, Butterworth came in contact with the folk song collector/editor Cecil Sharp and the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. They encouraged his musical abilities, and soon Butterworth was accompanying Vaughan Williams on folk song-collecting excursions into the English countryside. Butterworth soon left Oxford for London, abandoning the study of law to study briefly at the Royal College of Music, teach, write music criticism for the Times, and compose. He helped reconstruct the full score of Vaughan Williams' "A London Symphony," the autograph of which had been lost at the outbreak of World War I in 1914. At the beginning of the first world war, Butterworth enlisted in the Duke of Cornwall's Durham Light Infantry (he was known as G. S. Kaye-Butterworth in the army). He was killed at Pozieres, leading a raid during the Battle of the Somme.