Saturday 15 November 2014

Butterworth Dancing

Something I heard on the radio led me to this poignant curiosity - footage of the composer George Butterworth dancing in 1912. As is clear even from this short clip, he's a fine dancer - indeed he was so good that for a while he was employed by the English Folk Dance and Song Society as a professional morris dancer, one of the society's demonstration team.
 Four years after this footage was filmed, Butterworth was dead, shot through the head at the Somme. His body was never recovered.
 Here is his beautiful setting of Housman's Loveliest of Trees...

1 comment:

  1. By the way, this post is in no way intended to condone morris dancing.

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