The Banks of Green Willow

Some of my water-themed photos set to the beautiful music of George Butterworth.

"The Banks of Green Willow" always conjures up a picture of a lazy summer day by a gently-flowing English river, maybe with punters languidly drifting by. Unfortunately, I haven't got any pictures like that, so I made do with holiday snaps taken locally at: Holiday Beach, Malden Park, Silver Lake in Waterloo, Stratford, Port Stanley, St. Mary's, Lion's Head, Chatham, St. Catherines and Hillsdale, Michigan.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• banks
• green
• willow
• george
• butterworth

[songsmith31a]

@DavidJPitt...

you are absolutely right. Those who think the English have no passion make a

grievous mistake and usually end up underestimating us - to their cost.  If you

look elsewhere on YouTube you will find "George Lloyd". Listen to the excerpt

from his 6th Symphony and enjoy. A shockingly under-performed British/Cornish composer whose service in WW2 set his shooting-star career back

never to fully recover. He died in 1998 - and the BBC Proms still omits his music!

.

[HenryOrientJnr]

@songsmith31a @songsmith31a Thanks for the link to LLoyd's 6th symphony. I was unfamiliar with his music until now. I read in a Telegraph obituary that he was blacklisted by the BBC because he wrote music that appealed to concert-goers instead of academics with their fashionable atonality. Well that movement really killed off classical music in the 2nd half of the twentieth century, didn't it?

[HenryOrientJnr]

It is Neville Marriner with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.

[TheClassicalCritic]

Beautiful, such a shame that Butterworth died so young, the amazing potential that he had can be heard very clearly in this piece.

[rdmacyo]

So sad. What might have been.

[lonelycyclist]

What lovely music and what a great shame this talented died so young during the first world war.

[vampycac1]

what a beautiful piece of music,so soothing and so English,it just calms you,a young life on the verge of great things(will we ever learn)i very much doubt it how sad

[nickbilderback1]

2:30 - 3:00 dissonance to consonace!

[windstorm1000]

@paklaanfa tellingly true, thank you so much for that insightful comment.

[windstorm1000]

@songsmith31a yes, a terrible, terrible loss.....

[windstorm1000]

@PacRimJim yes, ineffably....Butterworth was a rare spirit stilled by cannon's roar---like a nightengale shot out of the sky...yet he leaves an impression much stronger for all his fleetingness....

[windstorm1000]

As far as English composers go, I think Butterworth on par with Vaughn Williams (his friend), Elgar and Britten. Some may scoff at this opinion--given B.'s small output-- but if a composer's measure is the QUALITY of what he put out and his individual VOICE, Butterworth is in. His music is on a rarefied plane, above the fray--it has great HEART, tenderness & rare spirit. Perhaps such a person could not long be of this world. I love him and I love his music. So here's to you dear George.

[1redfive]

Beautiful music and so English. It's a shame that this guy destroyed most of his work thinking it wasn't up to scratch. Also, as has been said previously, he died in ww1. Like Buddy Holly, you're left thinking what if...

[PacRimJim]

Butterworth was shot through the head by a sniper at the Battle of the Somme in WWI.

Who knows what beauty the world lost that day.

Ineffably sad.

[Sweethgc]

@TheClassicalCritic really..... its sad