AE Housman

Distant landscapes and evocations of a lost world, in Butterworth's settings of poetry by AE Housman and RL Stevenson.

A close friend of Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth was killed at the age of 31, during the battle of the Somme as dawn broke on the 5th August 1916. A war hero, he was awarded the Military Cross twice. Butterworth's legacy rests on a handful of pieces, notably his much loved English Idylls and folk-song arrangements. He belongs to a generation of composers who showed great promise early on, only to be denied the chance to reach musical maturity. This week's series also features the work of four contemporaries of Butterworth: fellow Englishmen Ernest Farrar and W Denis Browne, the Scottish composer Cecil Coles and the Australian composer Frederick Septimus Kelly. All of them, like Butterworth, died on active service during the Great War. Among the musical gems, there's the first ever recording of Denis Browne's ballet "The Comic Spirit", made for the series by the BBC Philharmonic. Their musical trajectory may be short, but this lost generation of composers nonetheless made an indelible mark on the face of British music.

Today Donald Macleod is joined once again by Dr Kate Kennedy, a specialist on this period of our cultural history. The poetry of AE Housman invokes vocal and instrumental responses from Butterworth.

Frederick Kelly
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day
Robin Tritschler, tenor
Malcolm Martineau, piano

Ernest Farrar
Vagabond Songs, Op.10
Stephen Varcoe, baritone
Clifford Benson, piano

George Butterworth
Bredon Hill and Other Songs
Benjamin Luxon, baritone
David Willison, piano

Cecil Coles
From the Scottish Highlands
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Martyn Brabbins, conductor

George Butterworth
Rhapsody: A Shropshire Lad
English String Orchestra
William Boughton, conductor.