Description
In 1896 the English poet, Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936), published a set of 63 poems entitled A Shropshire Lad. Houseman’s verses consider the helplessness of man, the fragility of life and the terrible effects of war, against the background of an achingly beautiful countryside. Inspired by Housman’s work, George Butterworth, along with a number of his contemporaries (including his friend Vaughan Williams), wrote song settings of eleven of the poems in 1911-12. Shortly afterwards he also wrote an orchestral rhapsody of the same name, intending it as an epilogue to the songs.
Butterworth’s orchestral rhapsody A Shropshire Lad is his masterpiece and surely one of the greatest of all English orchestral works. It is a deeply felt – but not sentimental – pastoral idyll. Just as in Housman’s poems, Butterworth’s work is nostalgic but never shies away from the darker undertones and cruelties of life. It principally uses themes from one of the songs – the Loveliest of Trees – but in the piece’s coda he also quotes a single phrase from his With Rue My Heart is Laden, for golden friends I had. These words have particular poignance: Butterworth was killed at the Somme in 1916, aged 31, shortly after being awarded the Medal of Courage.
