![]() His parents returned to London from York in 1910 but, sadly, his mother, a victim of Hodgkin’s disease, died in the following January. Housman poems from A Shropshire Lad and, between 19, composed his first orchestral work, a rhapsody based on folk songs, the English Idyll Number 1, It was during this time that he completed the musical settings of A.E. His career as a schoolmaster did not last long for he left Radley in July 1910 and briefly studied piano and organ at the Royal College of Music in London. In 1909, he took up the post of assistant music master at Radley College in Abingdon, close to Oxford, where he also helped with sporting activities. ![]() George left Oxford in 1908 and, struggling to establish himself as a composer, became a music critic for The Times and also contributed articles on living contemporary composers to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Film of George dancing, taken on a Kinora machine in 1912, may be viewed on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library and War Composers’ websites. He published several books of country and Morris dances in collaboration with Cecil Sharp, another leading figure in the folk music scene, and also collected and arranged an album of Sussex folk songs. For a time he was employed by the society as a professional dancer to demonstrate Morris dance. He joined the Folk-Song Society in 1906 and was a founder member of the Folk-Dance Society formed in 1911. George had already made a friend of Ralph Vaughan Williams, a leading figure in the collection of this folk material, and George became an avid collector of songs, dance tunes and dances eventually accumulating details of more than 450. They feared that this heritage would be lost as gramophones and sheet music became popular. Folk songs and dancesĪt the turn of the century, a number of musicians were becoming increasingly anxious to preserve the music of traditional songs and dances which had been handed down in the oral tradition through generations of ordinary families. As he became more and more involved with the growing interest in folk music, he abandoned the thought of a legal career. In 1904 he went up to Trinity College, Oxford with this in mind but was still greatly interested in music, becoming President of the University Music Society. Here his musical promise was also recognised, but George was encouraged by his father to follow his own profession and study law. From Aysgarth he won a scholarship to Eton College in 1899. At this time he began his first compositions, some simple hymns. In the spring of 1896 George was sent to Aysgarth Preparatory School in the Yorkshire Dales where his musical talent was encouraged and hew was allowed to play the chapel organ. ![]() At the same time George was also enrolled for dance lessons. As his talent developed she arranged for lessons with an experienced German piano teacher, Christian Padel, whose home was very close to the Butterworth’s. George’s mother abandoned her own musical career after her marriage but channelled her energies into her son’s education, engaging private tutors for general subjects and teaching him the piano. The unveiling of the plaque to George Butterworth in 2016 with Anthony Murphy (George Butterworth’s biographer) and girls of the Mount School Education
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