George Sainton Kaye Butterworth was born on 12th July 1885 in Paddington. His father Sir Alexander Kaye Butterworth moved the family to Driffield Terrace, York soon after, when he became general manager of the North Eastern Railway Company. George’s mother Julia was a former professional singer, and gave her young son piano lessons, which he soon took to, and he became an organist at the chapel of his prep school, Aysgarth in Bedale, North Yorkshire.

In 1899, 14-year-old George, won a scholarship to Eton, and then in 1904 went to Trinity, Oxford to study classics or Greats as it was then known, prior to a career in law. But music and cricket interested him far more, and he became President of the Music Club, befriending Ralph Vaughan Williams, and becoming a founder member of the English Folk Dancing & Song Society, and a member of the national demonstration troupe for Morris dancing. Edwardian England saw a huge interest in folk songs, traditional dancing and pastoral pursuits, and an appreciation of the countryside idyll.

After leaving university, Butterworth taught for a while, and studied briefly at the Royal College of Music, but left early to begin a tour of England, largely by train and on foot, talking to local people in small towns and villages and gathering examples of traditional folk songs, dances and poems.

During this time he set eleven of A.E Houseman’s poems to authentic folk music, which later became his Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad, and two other orchestral works based on folksongs he had collected in East Chiltington and Billingshurt in Sussex in 1907: Two English Idylls (written in 1911) and The Banks of Green Willow (written in 1913)

When war started, Butterworth was at something of a loose end, and he saw the war as an opportunity for purpose and application. He found himself unable to get the Oxford University Officer Training Corps to recommend him for a commission, so he enlisted instead in the 6th Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry on 1 September 1914.

After serving as a private and training at Aldershot, he was transferred to 13th DLI and commissioned as a 2/Lt in November 1914. He was promoted to Lt in May 1915, and was sent to the Western Front on 10 September 1915. Being a soldier suited him, although he omitted to tell his fellow officers that he was a composer.

By all accounts he was a modest and rather blunt man, who disliked artifice. He destroyed much of his unpublished work, how much exactly is unknown, but feared that if he was killed in action, he would be unable to ‘improve it’. The rest of his manuscripts, he bequeathed to his friend and mentor, Ralph Vaughan Williams.

In July 1916, the 13th DLI were moved to the Somme and Butterworth was recommended for the Military Cross, the citation read 'Before the morning of July 28th 1916, a company under Lieut. G.S. Kaye-Butterworth, M.C. assisted by a company of the 12th (DLI), had gained ground on the right by digging what later became known as Butterworth Trench, 200 yards in length and almost parallel to the German Switch Line. Ten men were wounded in doing this and Lt Kaye-Butterworth was also hit, but remained in command.’

According to the battalion war diary, dated 5th August, ‘Shortly after midnight Lieut. Kaye-Butterworth was ordered to come round the Loop with A company and form up for an attack, but our own shells were falling short here and this could not be done.'...'The death of Lieut. G.S. Kaye-Butterworth, M.C. was a great loss to English music, as well as to the 13th who knew him as a gallant and efficient officer. He was killed by a German sniper at dawn.'

Butterworth’s men buried him in the side of the trench during the battle, preparing to return later, and recover the body for burial, but a German counter-attack prevented them from doing so. His temporary grave was lost and he is commemorated on the Thiepval memorial.

When his brigade commander, Brigadier General Page Croft, wrote to Butterworth's father to inform him of his death, his family were surprised to learn that he had been awarded the Military Cross. The brigadier was equally astonished to find that Butterworth had been such a promising English composer and Brigadier Croft later wrote that Butterworth was "A brilliant musician in times of peace, and an equally brilliant soldier in times of stress”.