Whom the Gods Love: The Life and Music of George Butterworth

The career of the composer George Butterworth was cruelly cut short by a sniper's bullet at the Somme. His name is kept alive by the popularity of his orchestral tone-poems, such as The Banks of Green Willow and A Shropshire Lad, and his songs. In this book, the first full-length study of Butterworth, Michael Barlow traces his brief life: from preparatory school through Eton and Oxford, a teaching post at Radley, study at the Royal College of Music, a period as a music critic for The Times - and his enlisting in August 1914 which, two years later, led to his heroic death at the Somme. All of Butterworth's surviving compositions are discussed, and important chapters examine his Housman settings and his friendship with Vaughan Williams. Butterworth was also prominent in the folksong revival, and chronicled here for the first time are his extensive activities as a folksong and dance collector. The book also includes some of Butterworth's own writings on music.