The Complete Butterworth Songbook by Mark Stone & Stephen Barlow

Here is a welcome excavation!  British baritone Mark Stone and pianist Stephen Barlow have issued a recording on Stone's own independent label of the complete known songs of George Butterworth (1885-1916), a brilliant young composer who was one of the notable musical victims of the first World War.

Butterworth wrote two cycles of songs on poems of A.E. Housman, and one on poems of William Ernest Henley.  He also set 11 traditional folk songs in piano-accompanied art songs, and left a handful of unpublished songs on verses of Robert Seymour Bridges, Robert Louis Stevenson, Percy Shelley, and Oscar Wilde.  Some of the music has never before been recorded, although there is some healthy competition in the published song cycles.  Stone and Barlow have done a great service to British music in particular and music in general by setting down fine performances of music that deserves to be better known.  The production is also well designed, with handsome photographs of the composer and the performers, extensive notes, and full texts.  The production values are also high on the sound end, and the performances could scarcely be bettered.

My lone complaint concerns the "bonus" track indicated in the booklet, supposedly a rare film of Butterworth performing an English folk dance -- which would have to be very rare, considering the date of the composer's death in combat during the war.  But I can't tell much about it, because it won't play on my computer.  Setting that aside, this recording is a magnificent accomplishment that deserves wide circulation, both for preserving the works of a very talented young man with a particular flair for collecting and setting English folk music, and for providing incredible entertainment through these lovely songs, lovingly performed.

PS - After I posted the above, baritone Mark Stone emailed me a link to the Butterworth film.  Marvelous to think that those clear motion picture images date back almost a century.

Comments

[Doundou Tchil]

The film is in the archives at Cecil Sharp House in London. Fascinating guy, Butterworth. He was extremely repressed, looked much older than he was. He was seriously in denial about his creative self. I tracked down his military records, which shed interesting light on him. Cecil Sharp later became involved in strange circles, but we'll never know what Butterworth might have become, if he hadn't been killed so young.