Christmas Commons: On Christmas Night

Find the RMCC recording, new edition of the score, and rehearsal aids for this piece here.

This week we are featuring an arrangement of the Sussex Carol by English composer George Butterworth.

Before his untimely death in battle, George Butterworth showed much promise as a young composer. He seriously started composing music in college and became close friends with Ralph Vaughan Williams (who we will also be featuring in our Choral Commons very soon!), joining the Folk Song Society. He collected and preserved over 450 songs as a part of this group! Rather than study music at the Royal College of Music, he studied folk dance and became quite skilled. He kept composing throughout his studies and his music was consistently outstanding.

In 1914, when war broke out, George joined the military, eventually being promoted to Lieutenant and received several awards of valor, however he did not live long enough to accept them all. On August 5, 1916, he was shot in the head by a sniper. He was buried near the trench he was shot, his body never to be recovered.

His arrangment of the popular "Sussex Carol", which we are featuring this week, was arranged in 1907. He collected the tune in Sussex and his arrangement is notably different from more familiar version of the carol.

George Butterworth left his manuscripts to Ralph Vaughan Williams and his wife Ursula, and it's thanks to them that we have much of his music today.

Image credits:

Butterworth photograph: By photographer unknown - Photograph first published in the George Butterworth Memorial Volume, privately printed in the UK, 1918, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32101740

Memorial to George Butterwoth at the Pozières Memorial: Ybroc, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons