George Butterworth (1885-1916): Six Songs (1909-11)

George Butterworth epitomises the loss of talent provoked by the First World War. In 1914, he was regarded as being a potentially great composer: it is only possible to hazard what he would have achieved if he had survived. He was killed on 5 August 1916, during the second phase of the Battle of the Somme. His remaining catalogue of works is pitifully small. With only four extant orchestral works, of which two are enduring masterpieces – A Shropshire Lad: Rhapsody and The Banks of Green Willow. A major part of his reputation is invested in the vocal music: both folk-tunes and ‘art’ songs. His best-known settings are Housman’s Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad and Bredon Hill and other Songs.  It is one of the odd misunderstandings of English literature that A.E. Housman was somehow a ‘Great War’ poet. In fact, virtually all his poems that became universally known were written in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth. If any conflict was in his mind, it would have been the Second Boer War. The original volume of A Shropshire Lad was published with the poet’s financial assistance. Selling slowly at first, it ‘took off’ during the Great War years. It is a myth that this book could be found in every soldier’s knapsack, but the fact remains that many combatants did find succour and hope in the words of this poet. Housman’s poems are typically melancholic, dealing with thoughts of death, murder and the transience of life. Coupled with these themes are some of the most beautiful descriptions of the English landscape. Strangely, the poet barely knew Shropshire, but used this as an icon for his imaginary country.

Butterworth composed his Six Songs, settings by Housman, between 1909 and 1911.  ‘Loveliest of Trees’ simply, but effectively, majors on the fast-flowing years and the dreadful thought that the twenty-year-old poet may only see the cherry tree bloom fifty more times, (from his three-score years and ten). Many reading this poem would be denied that pleasure in this life.  ‘Look not into my eyes’ reflects on the Greek myth of Narcissus, “the Grecian lad” who drowns in the pool, after falling in love with his own reflection. All other lovers have been rejected.  The moral of ‘When I was one-and-twenty’ is quite simply “the folly of committing yourself as a young man.”   “Think no more” portrays a light-hearted and even reckless philosophy of life. I guess this was one way that servicemen were able to keep sane as they marched off to war.  ‘The Lads in their Hundreds’ creates an image of young men attending Ludlow Fair, with all the boasting and banter that they would have indulged in, and the fact that for some of them it would be the last time they would attend. But there is a dubious ‘positive’ side to this: ‘The lads …will die in their glory and never be old’. The final song, ‘Is My Team Ploughing?’ is a dialogue between a young farmer and his ghostly friend who asks, “I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart; Never ask me whose”. It must have been a thought that crossed the minds of many serving their country in those years.

Butterworth’s settings are a perfect fusion of words and music. He allows the text to make the maximum impact with the music driving home the point in an almost agonising manner.