George Butterworth died at the age of thirty-one, killed by a sniper’s bullet at the Battle of the Somme; his death was a great loss to British music. Like many composers of his and later generations he was attracted to the poetry of A. E. Housman, particularly the cycle, written in 1896, entitled A Shropshire Lad.
Of the two Housman song collections by Butterworth – Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad and Bredon Hill and Other Songs (five songs) – perhaps the most performed is the first:
0:26 Lovieliest of Trees
3:13 When I Was One-and-twenty
4:40 Look not in my eyes
6:56 Think no more, Lad
8:18 The Lads in their hundreds
10:52 Is my team ploughing?
Butterworth was a close friend of Ralph Vaughan Williams (Vaughan Williams’ Second Symphony, his ‘London Symphony’, is dedicated to Butterworth) and, given the ethos of the early twentieth century and the popularity of Housman’s poems, it’s not surprising that Vaughan Williams also composed a song cycle using the poetry of A Shropshire Lad. Written originally – the composer later orchestrated it – for tenor, piano and string quartet, the work is called On Wenlock Edge:
1. On Wenlock Edge 0:00
2. From Far, from Eve and Morning 3:49
3. Is My Team Ploughing 5:40
4. Oh, When I Was in Love with You 9:45
5. Bredon Hill 10:25
6. Clun 17:57
There are several other song cycles by Vaughan Williams, mostly based on the work of a single author. He set Shakespeare, Blake, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and, in the Songs of Travel, Robert Louis Stevenson:
00:00 I. The Vagabond
03:09 II. Let Beauty Awake
04:46 III. The Roadside Fire
07:10 IV. Youth and Love
10:10 V. In Dreams
12:40 VI. The Infinite Shining Heavens
14:55 VII. Whither Must I Wander
19:09 VIII. Bright Is the Ring of Words
21:08 IX. I Have Trod the Upward and the Downward Slope
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Pontarddulais!
The Art of Listening 