Butterworth: Two English idylls

Day 339

Butterworth: Two English idylls

Hallé Orchestra

Mark Elder

I've a busy few days ahead with concerts so only time for a brief piece today.

It is difficult not to see George Butterworth through the eyes of the First World War. He was killed at the battle of the Somme when he was barely out of his teens and is always regarded as one of the lost generation who might have gone on to great things in later life had he been spared.  He only left a small number of pieces, mainly songs based on Houseman and some short orchestral pieces which are very much part of the same ethos. This music is very much part of what Elizabeth Lutyens christened the 'cow pat' school and I have to say that I rather share her views. I've never quite connected with this style of English music. It is perfectly pleasant of course, but I do find it rather cloying and the harmonic language a bit fey. Still, one can't be too hard on the music of somebody who was still a teenager when he wrote the two Idylls. It is probably my fault that I hear them more as background music to a nostalgic TV drama set in the countryside in 1910 rather than music that grabs the attention in its own right.