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Idylls, London, and War: The Friendship of George Butterworth and Ralph Vaughan Williams
Hansen, Owen Everett
Hansen, Owen Everett
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Abstract
Musicians throughout history have found that interactions and friendships with their peers can inspire them to find new perspectives about their music. Whether by offering advice about a certain passage, listening to their concerns about a piece’s reception, or even helping to promote their friend’s new music to interested parties, these interactions assist in deepening the bonds of friendship between musicians. Examples of this dynamic can be examined in the friendship between Ralph Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth.While Butterworth and Vaughan Williams did not enjoy a long friendship because of Butterworth’s untimely death in World War I, their relationship impacted both profoundly. Whether it be their similar educational and social backgrounds, their interest in English folk music, or their views about the state of English concert music in the early 1900s, Vaughan Williams and Butterworth often shared viewpoints. Butterworth encouraged his older friend to write A London Symphony, and assisted on a number of occasions during the process of its creation, in the promotion of the piece in 1914, and in twice helping to recreate the score. Similarly, Vaughan Williams worked with Butterworth in collecting folk songs on two separate occasions, introduced him to many important and up-and-coming figures in English concert music, and promoted Butterworth’s music after the younger composer’s death.Previous scholarship has studied each composer and discussed their contributions, but none have delved exclusively into their friendship and its impact upon their careers. I will demonstrate, through the various letters that Vaughan Williams wrote and the scores of A London Symphony on which both Butterworth and Vaughan Williams worked, how this friendship impacted them and their music. Chapter 2 is an examination of their musical education and early attitudes about music in general. Chapter 3 considers their shared interest in folk music and their contributions to the English Folk Song Revival. Chapter 4 looks at the creation and reception of Vaughan Williams’s A London Symphony, along with an exploration of what both composers worked on before World War I. Chapter 5 provides a detailed analysis of the recreated 1918 manuscript score for A London Symphony along with the piano reduction score created by Butterworth while he worked on the fourth movement. This chapter includes coverage of all four movements of the symphony and notes the changes that occurred between its recreation and the published 1920 version with commentary on the purposes for those changes. Chapter 6 describes the impact World War I had on Butterworth and Vaughan Williams, using Butterworth’s own letters to his family to highlight what he faced in the trenches during the Battle of the Somme. This document enhances the available scholarship on Butterworth and Vaughan Williams and shows how A London Symphony demonstrates these connections of friendship and trust that each composer had for one another.
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Date
2023-01-01
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University of Kansas
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This item contains archived web content.
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1015139_1.pdf
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- Embargoed until 2173-05-31
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Keywords
Music history, A London Symphony, Folk Music, friendship, George Butterworth, Ralph Vaughan Williams, World War I